Showing posts with label restoration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restoration. Show all posts

Sunday, February 22, 2026

Tree Planting in Herring Cove Provincial Park, New Brunswick (2025)

Our organization did some tree planting work at Herring Cove Provincial Park this past September (2025).  This work was funded entirely by the Forests Canada organization through their Forest Recovery Canada initiative as the Project Sponsor.

 



This provincial park is located in the very southwest corner of New Brunswick, on Campobello Island (which is northeast of Grand Manan Island).  From the United States, Herring Cove is only a six minute drive from the border bridge at Lubec Narrows.  From our home base in Canada, the route is slightly more complicated, involving two ferry crossings in each direction, first to Deer Island and then on to Campobello Island.  Here's an overview graphic, courtesy of Google Earth:

 



The approximate GPS coordinates at the park visitor centre are:  44.87716, -66.93423


Most of the planting for this particular project involved planting tree seedlings where the Park staff wanted to improve visual buffers between camping sites (with existing sporadic mature trees).  We also planted a few trees in some open areas that should be returned to forest land, and in parts of the understory where the canopy could use eventual thickening and diversity.  The afforestation and the underplanting with both be important for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, and will provide additional habitat for birds and wildlife.  Basically, several goals aligned with the work that we carried out.

We initially started this project in 2024, and were happy that the weather cooperated in the Fall of 2025 to allow us to come back and finish the final phase of the project. 

In total, our planting team added 21,995 trees to the Park this year alone!

Here are a few photos of the planting team in action:











This project went very smoothly.  We were able to complete the planned planting on all of the targeted areas within this park.  Naturally, we will also be making regular visits back to monitor the long-term growth and health of the planted trees.

We'd like to thank the staff at NB Parks in general and Herring Cove's staff and grounds crew in particular for helping with the logistical planning that ensured this project came together, and we again want to thank the Forests Canada organization for being the sponsor that made this work possible.

You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2025 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Herring Cove Provincial Park" sub-folder.  Start here:

    www.replant-environmental.ca/photos

 

If you'd like to learn more about Herring Cove Provincial Park, visit their web page:

www.parcsnbparks.info/en/parks/6/herring-cove-provincial-park


Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark


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.

 

 








 




Tree Planting Project in Cape Breton Highlands National Park (2025)

This past Fall (2025), Replant.ca Environmental was able to do more work on a long-term tree planting project in Cape Breton Highlands National Park.  This work was part of a ongoing project on North Mountain that we're committed to for the next several years.

Cape Breton Highlands National Park (CBHNP) is located within the northern half of Cape Breton, which is the northeast end of the province of Nova Scotia.  If you're trying to drive there, it's about an four hour drive from Halifax.  North Mountain is located between Cheticamp and Cape North.

This multi-year project was designed and implemented under the direction of Nova Scotia's Clean Foundation, with financial assistance from the Province of Nova Scotia.

 




Here's a graphic (courtesy of Google Earth) showing the approximate location of our planting sites:


CBHNP is characterized predominantly by balsam fir and white spruce trees, with pockets of mountain ash (dogberry), tamarack (eastern larch), red maple, white birch, eastern white pine, and some other deciduous species.

Most of CBHNP consists of rolling hills covered with forests.  However, the Park also has a number of previously forested areas which were devastated by the spruce budworm a few decades ago, and which have failed to re-establish due to the large moose population. At the moment, the moose population is down quite a bit from historical averages, which presents an opportunity to re-establish more forest cover.


Here are a few photos of this year's team in action:

 









The work was quite challenging.  There was a lot of brush and vegetation to work through, and we had to climb over a lot of fallen tree trunks which were hidden in the vegetation.  Also, access is quite remote, requiring helicopters to get the crew and the trees into the planting sites each day.  This is quite tricky, because the weather is very unpredictable on North Mountain, and helicopters can't fly in fog or low clouds.

We were very pleased to act as a supply partner to the Clean Foundation on this project, doing the boots-on-the-ground tree planting work while they managed the project concept and provided financial backing and logistical support.

The 2025 project was especially challenging due to the heat wave and extreme drought that Nova Scotia experienced in the summer, lasting until just a few weeks before we started to plant.  At one point, the public was prohibited from all activities on crown land throughout the province, and our helicopters were off fighting wildfire (thankfully helping to protect lives and property).  We were quite happy when it started to rain shortly before we were scheduled to begin the project. 

All in all, despite the challenges, this project was a very rewarding experience!  We planted 217,889 trees in the Park in 2025.


You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2025 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Cape Breton Highlands National Park" sub-folder.  Start here:

    www.replant-environmental.ca/photos

 

We'd especially like to thank everyone for their hospitality and logistical support while we were on site.  Special shout-outs to Anne-Claude and Peter from Parks Canada, Cayla and Hannah from the Department of Natural Resources, Sean & Don from Strathlorne, and Beth and the other staff at Clean Foundation.


Jonathan "Scooter" Clark


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 NGO's, 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!


 





Saturday, November 23, 2024

Tree Planting in Mactaquac Provincial Park, New Brunswick (2024)

This past Fall (2024), Replant.ca Environmental finished the third phase of our long-term tree planting project at Mactaquac Provincial Park.  The work that we did in 2024 was made possible by support from Forests Canada (formerly known as Forests Ontario), and their ongoing Forest Recovery Canada program.

Mactaquac Provincial Park is only a 30 minute drive from Fredericton, over to the west through either Keswick or French Village.  The park is situated on the St. John River, across from the Mactaquac Dam and power generating station.  This station generates one eighth of the electricity for the entire province of New Brunswick.


 


Here's a graphic (courtesy of Google Earth) showing the location of the park:


Mactaquac has a golf course, campground, two beaches, hiking trails, and [in the winter] it also has cross-country skiing trails.  The camping options are excellent, with around four hundred camping sites and several rustic cabins.  The washrooms and showers were extremely clean, and the entire project was a wonderful experience.  Here's a link for anyone who wants to make reservations:

www.parcsnbparks.info/en/parks/10/mactaquac-provincial-park


In 2014, the first named hurricane of the season was Hurricane Arthur.  It was a very early hurricane, hitting North America in early July.  It swept up the east coast and over the Maritime provinces.  The winds did a tremendous amount of damage to trees and infrastructure, especially in the Fredericton area.  Mactaquac was hit quite hard, and lost a lot of trees.  Our goal was to start the slow process of replanting some of the areas that had blown down during that storm several years earlier, and also to begin creating new wooded areas in other sections of the park.

We had already done work in this park in both 2021 and 2022. The green areas that can be seen in the image below are from those earlier phases.  This year, we were able to complete five more sections in May (outlined in red) and one more section in the September (outlined in blue), as can be seen here:

 


Most of the planting for this site involves planting tree seedlings in fairly open areas, where the Parks team is turning some of the under-utilized fields and openings into future mature stands of trees.  This latter goal is important for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, and provides additional habitat for birds and wildlife.  It also allows the Park to better manage their budget for grounds maintenance (controlling the costs related to mowing the grass). There is also some underplanting at lower densities in some of the thinner sections of woods that are still recovering from the damage created by Hurricane Arthur.

Here are a few photos of the team in action at Mactaquac:

 

 

 


 

 


 

 




You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2024 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Mactaquac Provincial Park" sub-folder.  Start here:

    www.replant-environmental.ca/photos

 

We'd like to thank Kevin (the Park Manager) and Rob and their staff for their hospitality and support while we were on site.  We definitely look forward to returning in 2023 to continue the work that Forests Canada is making possible.


Jonathan "Scooter" Clark


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. 


 




 



Tree Planting Project in Gros Morne, Newfoundland (2024)

This past Fall (2024), Replant.ca Environmental was able to assist with more tree planting work in Gros Morne National Park.  Gros Morne is located on the west coast of Newfoundland, near Rocky Harbour.  If you're trying to drive there, it's about an hour north of Corner Brook (or four hours of driving north of the ferry terminal in Port Aux Basques).  This project was organized and sponsored by Parks Canada.

  



Here's a graphic (courtesy of Google Earth) showing the approximate location of our planting sites:



Gros Morne is characterized predominantly by black spruce trees, with pockets of balsam fir, mountain ash (dogberry), tamarack (eastern larch), mountain maple, white birch, and some other deciduous species.

Some of Gros Morne consists of rolling hills covered with forests.  Visitors will also discover exposed rock faces, bogs, ponds, and wetlands.  Gros Morne unfortunately has a number of previously forested areas which were devastated by the spruce budworm several decades ago, which have failed to re-establish.  These significant gaps in the forest canopy become more apparent when flying over the Park at low altitudes.

Here are a few photos of our team in action:


 



 


 


 


 



 


The work was quite challenging.  Although the photos above don't show the most challenging ground, there was a lot of brush and vegetation to work through, and there were a lot of fallen tree trunks hidden in the grass and vegetation.  Also, all of the planting sites required helicopters for access, which can frequently lead to significant downtime since helicopters often can't fly in Newfoundland's [frequent] foggy weather.  However, our team loved the experience of getting to visit Newfoundland again.  This wasn't our first time working here, as we did a similar project in 2023.  Our numbers this year were higher though, with approximately 300,000 trees planted in Gros Morne in 2024.

All in all, this project was a very rewarding experience!


You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2024 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Gros Morne National Park" sub-folder.  Start here:

    www.replant-environmental.ca/photos

 

We'd especially like to thank Darroch Whitaker and the rest of the staff at Gros Morne for their hospitality and logistical support while we were on site.


Jonathan "Scooter" Clark


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 NGO's, 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!


 




Tree Planting in Victoria Park, Truro, Nova Scotia

Our organization did quite a bit of tree planting work in Truro's Victoria Park in September 2024.  This work was completely funded by Forests Canada, which was the lead organization on this project.  Forests Canada (formerly Forests Ontario) is a wonderful organization that fundraises and supports the planting of trees all over our country.

 


Truro is located in central Nova Scotia, and is often referred to as "the hub of Nova Scotia."  From Truro, highways branch out in all directions to other points within the province.  Truro is a small town which has an official population of only about twelve thousand people, but when you count everyone within a fifteen minute drive of the town, the number is probably closer to fifty thousand.  That may not sound like much to anyone who lives elsewhere in a dense urban area.  But Truro also has something else rather special.  It has a municipal park, called Victoria Park.  And that park is over three thousand acres in size!  The people of Truro are extremely lucky to have access to such a large and beautiful park, located right inside the town limits.

But exactly how big is three thousand acres?  Well, to put it into perspective, New York City's famed Central Park is less than a thousand acres.  And Central Park has its own police precinct (the 22nd) which polices the 58km of pedestrian trails found there.  Victoria Park doesn't have its own precinct, but it definitely has an extensive trail network.

Here's an overview graphic of eastern Canada (courtesy of Google Earth), showing the location of Victoria Park:

 


When we originally contacted Victoria Park in 2020 to discuss the possibility of planting some trees there, we learned that there were several areas which could definitely benefit.  There were a few sections where trees had been removed after being killed by insects.  Also, the former municipal landfill (now decommissioned) was relatively barren.  Although some parts of the topsoil cap over the landfill had already been replanted several years ago by the Scouts and other organizations, there was still a great deal of work to be done.

We started our work within the park that year, initially funded by public donations.  However, we've worked in this park every year since 2020.  Hurricane Fiona caused major damage to the park in 2022, so for 2023 and 2024, our focus was on adding trees to areas where the forests had been flattened by the hurricane.

Our work in 2024 focused on three main areas.  We planted in the Gorge area first.  That area had a couple of sections which were almost completely destroyed in the storm, so we planted high density to help bring those bare areas back to future forest cover.  However, we also planted some additional seedlings (at much lower density) throughout parts of the Gorge area which were not heavily damaged, to enhance species diversity throughout the Gorge, and to improve long-term forest health.

In addition, there were two other large areas within the park that suffered major destruction, near the Wishing Well and the Vibert Trail.  We were able to fill each of these areas with trees, and also plant in a small storm patch to the south of these two areas.

The blue shaded areas in the graphic below show the ground that was planted in the Fall of 2024 (green areas are sections that we planted in past years):

 


To date, we've been able to plant six types of conifers (red spruce, eastern white pine, black spruce, white spruce, Jack pine, and a small number of eastern larch) plus six deciduous species (white birch, yellow birch, sugar maple, red maple, mountain ash, and red oak) within the Park. Our team planted 50,971 trees in Victoria Park in 2024 alone, thanks to the funding from Forests Canada!


Here are a few photos from our work in 2024:

 


 


 


 


 


 



You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2024 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Victoria Park" sub-folder.  Start here:

    www.replant-environmental.ca/photos

 

We'd like to thank Scott Holman and the park staff for having us, Don Cameron from the Department of Lands & Forests for helping with logistics coordination, and especially Forests Canada for being the Sponsor that made this project happen.


Edit:  Here are links to blog posts talking about some of our earlier work in this area, in case you want to review the earlier projects that we completed:

replant-environmental.blogspot.com/2021/10/tree-planting-project-in-victoria-park.html

replant-environmental.blogspot.com/2023/02/tree-planting-project-in-victoria-park.html


If you'd like to learn more about Truro's Victoria Park, visit their website:

www.victoriaparktruro.ca

Victoria Park is the #1 rated attraction in Truro, and has over fifteen hundred very positive reviews on Google.


Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark


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.

 

 








Monday, December 18, 2023

Tree Planting at the Poucette Carbon Plantation (2023)

Here's a post to share some info about another carbon sequestration project that we completed recently.  The tree planting work on this site in southeastern New Brunswick was done in the Fall of 2023.  The site is located on the Poucette Road, near Cormier Village.  This site is also very close to Route 15.  This project was designed and implemented under the direction of One Tree Planted.

 



This site was formerly owned privately by a third party, and that landowner harvested the wood a few years ago.  We were able to acquire the property after it was harvested, then we designed a plan to turn it into a carbon capture plantation to help mitigate climate change.  We will never allow it to be harvested again.  Here's a map showing where the property is located:

 


The GPS coordinates at the entrance to this site are:  46.12806, -64.31236


The primary purpose of this project was to support climate stability through carbon sequestration.  As a side benefit, this site will support biodiversity and wildlife habitat.

In total, the planting team added 83,879 seedlings on this site (four species).  In addition to our planted trees, this site already shows evidence of some natural regeneration of white birch, red maple, yellow birch, sugar maple, and balsam fir.  Diverse forests are healthy forests.

Here are a few more photos taken during the planting of this project, which took place during multiple visits in August, September, and October of 2023.  As the site had been harvested two years ago, a bit of low-value brush was present, which added to the challenges for the planting team:

 


 

 

 

 

 

We look forward to studying this site in the coming years.  We will be doing periodic surveys to assess the carbon capture progress of the new forest.

We were very pleased to act as a supply partner to One Tree Planted on this project, doing the boots-on-the-ground tree planting work while they approved the project design and provided the financial support.

You can see several dozen additional photos of the work on this planting site by visiting our public Planting Photos folder on Dropbox.  Go into the 2023 sub-folder, and then into the "Poucette Carbon Plantation" sub-folder.

 

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark


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 NGO's, 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!