Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority Forestry and Land Stewardship Specialist Says More Trees Planted This Year

by Bob Montgomery

The Ausable Bayfield Forestry and Land Stewardship Specialist says interest in tree planting has been growing in the last few years.

In a presentation Ian Jean made to the ABCA Board he said the numbers are growing every year and this year they had almost 250 tree orders for spring and fall planting programs. Jean says ABCA staff plant a lot of trees but they had over 15-thousand trees planted by people who just ordered trees and picked them up and planted them themselves and he says it's great to see that many people having a positive impact on the water shed.

Jean says the types of trees being planted hasn't changed significantly. He says people usually choose the type of tree that is best suited for what they're hoping to accomplish. He says a lot of the trees that are planted are for wind breaks so evergreens like Spruce and Cedar are best suited for that. For re-forestation they still use a lot of pine but they do mix in a wide variety of trees where it's appropriate, like Oak and Maple and Walnut and even some Tulip trees and things like that.

Jean says some Ash trees that were too young and small to be damaged by the Emerald Ash Borer are now growing, but he also points out the Borer hasn't gone away so as soon as those trees grow a little larger they are vulnerable to the Emerald Ash Borer, but he's hoping some of them will have some tolerance to the Borer. Jean says he's also hoping that there will be some agents in our environment that will effect the Borer and if they can bring the Borer numbers down then more of the trees can survive, but he adds, that could take years or decades.

It was also mentioned at the meeting that over the last eighteen years he's been involved in the planting of over one million trees. Jean says it's not exactly like Wayne Gretzky being the all-time scoring leader and he credits the people who live in the watershed and the people he works with for helping to make that possible. But he says that works out to about fifty-thousand trees a year so that says a lot about the people who live in the water shed and care enough about the environment to plant that many trees.