Our organization did some more tree planting work at the Five Islands Provincial Park this past September (of 2021). This work was funded by the Trees For Life organization. You can learn more about them from their website: www.treeforlife.ca
This provincial park is located in north central Nova Scotia, on the north side of the Minas Basin. This is on the south side of the arm that connects most of mainland Nova Scotia with New Brunswick. The town of Truro is about an hour to the east. Here's an overview graphic of eastern Canada, courtesy of Google Earth, which shows the location of this park:
This project was put together to initiate afforestation on some open areas, and to repair some of the extensive damage done by Hurricane Dorian in 2019. This storm battered central Nova Scotia quite strongly, and was the costliest storm in history when it came to damages to the provincial power grid.
Damages within the park were not as bad as in some of Nova Scotia's other provincial parks. However, since there were open areas in the park from previous insect damage, this park was a prime candidate for the planting of some new seedlings. When we offered to assist with this work, the park staff were very happy to accommodate.
The park foresters estimated that a series of openings along the sides of Camping Area B would be amenable to the addition of seedlings. We decided that this project would be approached in multiple phases. We would start by planting several thousand trees in the fall of 2020, and follow that up with a larger phase of planting in the fall of 2021.
Our first phase of work in 2020 got off to a great start, and was initially funded by public donations. However, the project really began to have a major impact in 2021 with the support of the Trees For Life organization. The support that we received from them funded the planting of 12,490 more trees in 2021!
The following graphic shows approximately where new seedlings have been added so far. Some of the seedlings were planted in open areas where trees were lost to the hurricane, and others were scattered as an underplant under various sections of existing partial canopy:
To date, our species mix for this project has included a total of seven species. We had five types of conifers (mostly red spruce, eastern white pine, and eastern hemlock, plus a handful of eastern larch and black spruce). We also had four species of deciduous hardwoods (sugar maple, red oak, mountain ash, and yellow birch).
Here are a few photos of our team in action in 2021:
The second phase of planting on this project went very smoothly. We're looking forward to returning next year to wrap up the final phase of the restoration work. This project is getting very close to completion now, and the addition of a few more hardwood seedlings will finish this project in 2022.
We'd like to thank the staff at the Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forestry for helping organize this project, and again to the Trees For Life organization for making this work possible.
You can see more photos of our 2021 tree planting work in our public 2021 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox.
If you'd like to learn more about the Five Island Provincial Park, visit their web page:
parks.novascotia.ca/park/five-islands
Thanks for reading!
Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests. We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases. We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world. If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page. Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!
To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website. Thanks so much for your interest!
Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects. Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.
