Written by Amanda Froelich at trueactivist.com
Guinness World Record for single-day reforestation efforts.
You often hear saddening statistics about the rate of deforestation from ecologically-minded friends and the news, but how often do you hear about the good that is being carried out to reverse environmental damage? Not as often, that’s for sure.
Therefore relish this news story, which features more than 45,000 people coming together to set the Guinness World Record for single-day reforestation efforts.
As stated by Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, “Ecuador broke a world record for reforestation Saturday, as thousands of people pitched in to plant 647,250 trees of more than 200 species.”
On May 16, 2015, thousands of people gathered to volunteer and reforest the Earth. They planted 220 different species of flora on almost 5,000 acres of land, setting a new Guinness World Record.
As Ecuador has set a national target to conserve and restore more land than what is deforested between 2008 and 2017, such a project will no doubt help the country maintain its vision.
As noted by the country’s environment department, since 2008, deforestation has been reduced by more than 50% of the historical rate, protecting 4.3% of the total land area (which equates to about 840 million trees).
Because trees are vital to the environment (think of them like the lungs of our Earth – purifying the air that keeps us – and all of nature – alive), reforestation helps offset the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through “carbon sequestration.”
Basically, there are two approaches to reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere: the first is by reducing the amount of emissions being produced, and the second is sequestration, which deals with the carbon itself.
As trees absorb carbon dioxide for fuel by pulling it from the atmosphere, reduce soil erosion, improve air and water quality, and protect wildlife habitats, they are definitely a natural resource to be treasured.
Interestingly enough, Ecuador holds another world record for the most plastic bottles recycled in one week, according to Guinness. Go Ecuador!
Share your thoughts with us below.
This is brilliant! Could we petition for an arranged competitive event such as this here in the states, or even better a national week? Like Arbor Day, except one that actually DOES something? I really do believe we’ve been approaching all this environmental devastation all wrong- eliminating auto or factory emissions is a good thing, but it isn’t going to solve the entire problem, as emissions of methane will continue piling up anyway on top of our atmosphere thanks to natural permafrost melting…a cycle which we may or may not have started or helped massively along but by this point it is rather moot to debate…not to mention cutting emissions down doesn’t help the fact that deforestation causes soil erosion, water depletion, animal extinctions. human rights matters….we’d hit many targets instead of one by applying this solution ontop of what we are already doing to combat this. Anybody got any ideas where or how we could start, whom we could provide this idea to?
(if repeat post please ignore)
Could we make this an official event or national week task goal set here in the United States? Or better yet the UN? I think if we made it in a competitive light for all nations to do, like somehow whoever meets that tree-planting goal with proof that they did it definitively and that selected reforested land won’t be mined or stripped off within at least 20 years, it could actually provide a lot of progress. See, we may be doing some good by eliminating emissions from cars or factories but I do not think we are seeing the big picture. It’s not enough! And to boot, people are still going to be BUYING cars/deforesting areas and thus killing the native species and peoples who live there/ruining the soil and ground water supply…not to mention the melting of permafrost is a natural process that will continue releasing into our atmosphere tons of methane anyway…so instead of futilely just attempting to weakly curb SOME of that gas (and measuring it pointlessly) why not create back a natural buffer to absorb it/help hit so many other ecological targets and concerns in the process that are linked with this problem? Whose with me! What organizations and resource groups could we reach out with this idea of a global tree planting competition to? Any ideas??
How does that square with this? http://www.businessinsider.com/ecuador-selling-its-rainforest-to-china-2013-3
this story you post is false. Go try to find out what Chinese company bought how much rainforest for how much money. It is all made up.
And then sell the old stuff off to China ! wow what amazing businessmen.
Ecuador To Sell A Third Of Its Amazon Rainforest To Chinese Oil Companies http://www.businessinsider.com.au/ecuador-selling-its-rainforest-to-china-2013-3
For every good news story there is at least one disinfo story…
Too bad they are now selling 1/3 of their Amazon rainforest jungle to China for oil exploitation…Use this above news to distract from what I type here.. Shame on Equador and China!!!! 28-10-2016
The Business Insider story is false, if not simply disinformation. It is 3 years old, and what Amazon rainforest has been sold to China? Nothing. Go look for yourself. Google it and see. All you see is this false story reprinted over and over, with no evidence that Ecuador sold any rainforest to China.