If a tree is planted, does it make a difference? These forest builders say yes

Compared to the federal government's goal of planting two billion trees, a local non-profit like PlantForever might seem like a single leaf in the wind.

But to founding president Marmik Patel, the work is about more than sheer numbers. It's about bringing green space back to concrete jungles and helping build connections between city slickers and nature.

PlantForever is a student-led initiative founded in 2017. Homeowners in Edmonton and Saskatoon can register with the group to plant trees on their property in exchange for a minimum donation of $10 per tree — and the first tree is free.

"The ideal outcome is to see every major city with a big tree canopy percentage, have opportunities for parks and trees at homes and public property, and not feel that disconnect that we see in many major cities where it's just concrete and roads and not enough nature," Patel, a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Saskatchewan, told CBC's What on Earth.

The federal government is continuing its work to plant two billion trees by 2031, despite comments from Canada's environmental watchdog earlier this year stating that Ottawa was using "creative accounting" to claim it was exceeding its targets.

What on Earth spoke to people who are passionately dedicated to their tree-planting missions and learned about some of the scientific and bureaucratic challenges they're experiencing along the way.

PlantForever faces two major challenges, according to Patel: storage and funding.

"For Edmonton, we [had] over 500 trees this season," he said in an interview earlier this summer. "It's pretty difficult to fit that in one person's home."

Some of his team members offered space at their homes to store trees awaiting planting. Ideally, Patel would like to find someone who could lend the use of a larger acreage while they do their work.

Patel would also like to access income streams beyond what the donations bring in.

PlantForever isn't a big enough operation — it's described online as an 11-person team with 50 volunteers — to qualify for federal funding under the 2 Billion Trees (2BT) program. That requires a minimum of 10,000 trees planted per year.

Patel said he hopes to register the group as a charity so it can qualify for funding not normally available to non-profits.

A few hundred trees may not sound like a lot in the big picture but it is "awesome" and "hugely, hugely important," said David Wallis, reforestation policy and campaign manager for Nature Canada, an Ottawa-based environmental advocacy organization.

"Most land in urban and suburban areas is privately owned, and those pieces of land need to be part of the solution to solving the biodiversity crisis," he said. It's a major step up from lawns, which he said "do nothing for biodiversity" and are more akin to "big green deserts."