Tree planting wasted efforts......

[Stere]

Phantom Forests: Why Ambitious Tree Planting Projects Are Failing

E360.YALE.EDU

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High-profile initiatives to plant millions of trees are being touted by governments around the world as major...

 

 

Shame...

 

Lack of aftercare &  initial sensible scheme planning etc

 

Bit like some council/charity tree planting schemes in the UK.

 

 

[GarethM]

When you get paid per tree they'll plant them anywhere, I did read an article that was atleast a little pragmatic and suggested they should have started around existing fringes of forest which would guarantee better success.

 

I'm not a eco type, but they do need to be a bit more selective in the schemes.

 

The Aral sea would be my first choice, literally an inland ocean has disappeared if solved would probably reduce the touted rising sea level and turn a desert back to farmland.

[Stere]

China seems to have had a sucess restoring the  loess plateau. Was turned into a eroded "desert" now being re-greened.

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Stere

[coppice cutter]

Must be pretty bad when even the BBC are flagging it up.

 

How phantom forests are used for greenwashing

WWW.BBC.CO.UK

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Governments that make forest restoration promises they don't keep are accused of greenwashing.

 

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

38 minutes ago, Stere said:

Phantom Forests: Why Ambitious Tree Planting Projects Are Failing

E360.YALE.EDU

---

High-profile initiatives to plant millions of trees are being touted by governments around the world as major...

 

 

Shame...

 

Lack of aftercare &  initial sensible scheme planning etc

 

Bit like most council/charity tree planting schemes in the UK.

 

 

Fixed that for ya...

[openspaceman]

7 hours ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

Fixed that for ya...

Naughty of you but I agree with what you say

[Dan Maynard]

They finished a massive A14 road building project a couple of years ago and planted thousands and thousands of trees, almost all dead now.

 

I can imagine them saying in Yes, Minister "Well we promised to plant a million trees, we didn't promise they would grow."

[JaySmith]

There are so many ambitious targets to get more trees in the ground and rightfully so. It is all well and good government putting numbers out there, however it would appear that there has been little thought about how these targets are going to be achieved in the real world. 
 

The issues that local councils and private businesses face are multifaceted, on one hand stock is an issue, many of the nurseries work well in advance and won’t have factored these large new targets into their plans. Staff as we know across the industry is a real problem, there is a genuine lack of staff across the board and whilst one may argue that planting is not as skilled as an 80ft takedown over targets you still need people who understand the job and are competent at undertaking the works. Coupled with this budgets are an issue, government want to plant more but the funding needs to be there. Yes there are various grants and subsidies, but are they really enough? Also these new trees will also need maintenance in the future, especially in the urban environment. Aftercare is also a real issue, many of the problems we see like in the article are the result of a lack of aftercare. It’s all well and good planting trees but if you do not invest in a three year aftercare programme you may as well poor the money down the drain. 

[GarethM]

Around the world you can argue planting trees can be beneficial to the environment of those countries, think reversing desertification that sort of thing, the UK and most northern counties not so much as we have large amounts of forest and managed and productive farmland.

 

What is the point of planting trees on valuable arable land ?. What is your goal, carbon dioxide reduction at the expense of growing it in the 3rd world?.

[JaySmith]

10 hours ago, GarethM said:

Around the world you can argue planting trees can be beneficial to the environment of those countries, think reversing desertification that sort of thing, the UK and most northern counties not so much as we have large amounts of forest and managed and productive farmland.

 

What is the point of planting trees on valuable arable land ?. What is your goal, carbon dioxide reduction at the expense of growing it in the 3rd world?.

We do have large amount of woodland in this country, however in many locations that is steadily decreasing. Not all arable type land is used for food and crop production, I’m thinking of land that is used for things like shoots, set aside etc. This land could have trees planted upon it. For land that is used for crops maybe sections of it could be used for trees and shelter belts as opposed to planting full on woodlands. This approach could benefit the land in many ways including adding biodiversity and wildlife to the area. 
 

The ICF has an event coming up which looks at integrating trees into farmland, it would be interesting to see what the ideas on this are. 

 

National Conference 2023: Connecting Trees, Farmers and Foresters - The Institute of Chartered Foresters

WWW.CHARTEREDFORESTERS.ORG

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This ground-breaking hybrid conference looks at how we can integrate trees into the farmed landscape and build...