You may or may not have heard about this program that is sponsored by the Manitoba government. Their mandate is to plant 5 million trees in 5 years. It’s all part of part of Kyoto and Beyond — the province’s action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. We were fortunate enough to find out about the program through an ad in the paper last fall. According to the information we found they would supply the trees and if the land area was large enough they would even do the planting 🙂 It seemed a little too good to be true, but we filled out the application  and crossed our fingers. This spring the coordinator of the program came out to look at the site and all was good. They would be back to plant the trees! If you have driven by the campground lately you can see how successful the trees have been this year – One good thing about all the rain this summer. The field between the campground and Scrapyard Paintball as well as an area North of the campground is now full of trees which are growing like crazy. The majority of the trees are a hybrid poplar which will grow to be 12 feet in approximately 3 years. Some of the ones that were planted this spring are already over 3 feet tall. Last spring we planted some of these poplars and some of  them are over 6 feet already and growing quickly. Last week we were given a notification of how many trees were actually planted – 8755  poplar and 1080 white spruce. I knew there were lots, but had no idea that there was that many. If my memory is correct last spring we planted at least 2000 trees. That is over 10,000 trees that have been planted in and around the campground in the last two years. It has been a lot of work to maintain the trees this summer and will continue over the next few years, but it is well worth it as you see the trees growing and growing.

According to one report that I read Manitoba Forestry expected to plant 2 million trees this summer and that they had already planted 1.1 million since the program started in 2008. They are well on their way to the goal of 5 million. If you are interested in where to apply for the trees check the link here http://www.gov.mb.ca/conservation/forestry/t4t/index.html