15 million verified trees for the greater global good
Pledge by
Woodchuck USA
Restoring, Growing & Enabling 15 million trees across the globe in various ecosystems
- Type
- Restoring & Growing, Enabling
- This pledge will take place from
- 2020 to 2030
- Location
- Argentina, China, France and more
Pledge overview
WOODCHUCK USA was founded on the simple mission; To put nature back into people's lives. We design and manufacture custom wood gifts such as Journals, corporate gifts, and accessories, as well as custom wood packaging. Through our "Buy One. Plant One." Program, we've planted 3 Million trees across the globe and have the goal to plant 15 million by 2030.
We've planted on 6 different continents with specific sites including California, Minnesota, Canada, Indonesia, New Zealand, Madagascar, Peru, France, and Argentina.
Those 3 million trees across the globe cover approximately 6,000 acres, which is enough to fill every major professional and collegiate sports field in the world 3 times over!
Actions in this pledge
-
Restoring and growing trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Assisted natural regeneration
- Actions that support natural regeneration without tree planting, such as Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, forest soil remediation, exotic species control, disease prevention, and wildfire protection
- Reforestation
- Re-establishment of forest through planting and/or deliberate seeding on land classified as forest, that has been degraded or where trees are unlikely to regenerate naturally
- Mangrove restoration
- Establishment or enhancement of mangroves along coastal areas and in estuaries
- Watershed protection and erosion control
- Establishment and enhancement of forests on very steep sloping land, along water courses, in areas that naturally flood and around critical water bodies
- Urban tree planting
- Planting and maintaining trees within urban areas
Additional details
Activities are developed and implemented in collaboration with our partners with regular updates on progress.
Restoring & Growing
- Trees
- 15 million
-
Enabling activities for trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Nursery and seedling development
- Establish tree nurseries, including actions such as identification and collection of seeds and/or growing seedlings
- Sustainable forest management
- Activities that support the stewardship and use of forests (including by local communities and indigenous peoples), to maintain their biological diversity, productivity, and regeneration capacity, as well as their potential to fulfil relevant ecological economic and social functions
- Market development for sustainable forest products
- Activities that create markets and demand for ecologically and socially responsible timber and non-timber forest and agroforestry products, e.g. capacity-building for the harvesting and processing of agroforestry products, forest certification standards, etc.
- Education and capacity building
- Forest / tree species conservation and restoration education programmes, targeted educational and behaviour change campaigns, training and capacity building, including promotion of local and traditional knowledge and practices
- Community mobilisation
- Community mobilisation and engagement activities for conservation, restoration and reforestation, including enabling systems of community governance, etc.
- Youth engagement
- Engagement of young people and/or youth networks to catalyse a restoration generation
Additional details
Activities are developed and implemented in collaboration with our partners with regular updates on progress.
Enabling
Our ecologically and socially responsible approach
From the founding of our company in 2012, the core mission has been to "put nature back into people's lives". Just a few short years after starting the "Buy One. Plant One." program, our company strives for ecological excellence from the materials we source, to the way we manufacture, to the way we run our facility.
After years of experience, and millions of trees planted we’ve learned a lot about planting partners, government infringement, and local engagement. With this knowledge we’ve implemented a 3 Pillar checklist to ensure that our future planting sites are successful.
1. Local community support
Local community engagement is vital to our large scale planting, and then supporting the planting site growth. Local communities provide fire support teams, and maintain forestry practices that keep these planting sites healthy. Without community support it is common to see a forest burned by fire, or harvested to sell at local markets. The dedication from local support teams is what makes lasting impact.
2. Local and national government support
It's important to us that our planting sites continue to grow and develop ecosystems long after we plant them. A major threat to the longevity of a forest is a government that is actively harvesting forests to create industry, or subsidized housing land. We find regions where both local, and national governments are supportive of our planting efforts which enables us to create thriving ecosystems.
3. Business / funding support
In most cases, reforestation will not start without outside funding. Our outside funding provides a jump start for tree planting to begin and temporarily sustained. However, the end goal in all of these locations is to create a self generating ecosystem that is not reliant primarily on outside funding. While the forests get replenished, operations such as farming, fishing, and trade making are able to happen once again with the local villages taking point on the efforts.
Our results tracking
Through verifying our tree planting initiatives.
Ecological metrics
Clean water, soil, air, biodiversity, and regeneration of forests which lead to protecting unique species and biomes
Social metrics
Carbon footprint, economic benefits, job creation, improved livelihood of indigenous tribes, and protection of our combined future
Our partners
American Forests (USA sites), Department of Natural Resources (USA sites) , Eden Reforestation Projects (Madagascar, Indonesia, Nepal), One Tree Planted (Canada), National Forest Foundation (USA sites), Reforest Action, internal WOODCHUCK employees, and several others.
Our locations
We are working at locations across Argentina, China, France, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nepal, New Zealand, Peru, Spain, and United States of America (USA).