BOISE, Idaho — As part of The City of Trees Challenge to fight climate change and restore our National Forests, the City of Boise, the Arbor Foundation, and The Nature Conservancy have partnered together to plant 37,000 seedlings in the Boise National Forest.
This will help restore the land, wildlife habitat and vegetation destroyed in the 2016 Pioneer Fire that burned over 180,000 acres.
“The thing that is really cool about this project, is we are accomplishing both the forest restoration and putting more trees back in the forest to mitigate for climate,” said Mark Menlove, State Director for TNC in Idaho.
This is the first planting out of 235,000 seedlings that will be planted all throughout Idaho's National Forests.
“It’s important for so many reasons because of erosion control we are losing topsoil we are losing the resources that we need to keep a healthy forest," said Menlove. "By getting in there and planting the types of trees that were already there which is, in this case, Ponderosa, Pine and Douglas Fir we are stabilizing that forest”
The City of Trees Challenge started as an initiative to plant one tree for every household in the city.
"We can actually get up to 30 percent of the emissions reduction we need through natural climate solutions, and that’s not just planting trees it’s a whole host of using nature, but planting trees is a big component of that,” said Menlove.
The seedlings used in this project were all grown locally from Lucky Peak Nursery.
