Ep. 2 ReForest London's Million Tree Challenge

Last Friday June 17^th, ReForest London (a not for profit organization here in the forest city) kicked-off for their Million Tree Challenge.

Attended by a number of honorable guests including London mayor Joe Fontana (Pictured below), Members of Provincial Parliament Chris Bentley & Deb Matthews and Member of Parliament Ed Holder, ReForest London launched their plan to plant a million new trees in the forest city over the next 10 years.  Already responsible for planting over 8,000 new native trees and shrubs since 2008 ReForest London is calling out to all London businesses, individuals and organizations to take part and help achieve their goal.  

The first act of the challenge is to plant one tree for every Londoner over the next three years, over 330,000 trees.  Deb Matthews, MPP for London North-Centre and Ontario Minster of Health briefly spoke on the goals of ReForest London saying that “audacious goals, achieve audacious results” and further commenting on the provinces own audacious plans to plant 100 million trees between now and 2020. 

The next move in achieving these “audacious” goals belongs to all the people, schools, community organizations, businesses and institutions of the forest city. ReForest London continues to look for new partners at every level to pledge to plant new trees and register their planting with ReForest London so they can accurately track progress over the coming years.  London’s tree cover, which is currently just shy of 25%, is set to potentially double over the next decade as the challenge presses forward. Community partners such as London Health Sciences Centre have committed to planting more trees on their campuses and more partners are climbing on board to support the grass-roots movement to ReForest the Forest City.  

Here at Friends of the Coves Subwatershed Inc we have committed as a community partner to promote the mission of the challenge and are encouraging the members of the Coves community to both take part in the planting and to register with the Million Tree Challenge website.  We will also be running our own planting events in the Coves come the fall.

To pledge your support and to get involved with ReForest London and the Million Tree Challenge  you can visit their websites at www.milliontrees.ca or www.reforestlondon.ca