The Importance of Trees

Do you know how important trees really are? Not only do they help us produce paper and building materials, but they are equally essential to the environment. Their roots help anchor loose soil preventing erosion and also absorb large amounts of water, which helps prevent flooding. They provide stable habitats for vast numbers of species, supplying fruit and nuts as food as well as adding more nutrients to the soil when their leaves fall onto the ground and form a nutrient rich layer of humus that helps other plants to grow. When they photosynthesise, trees take up some of the CO2 (a greenhouse gas) from the atmosphere and put back the oxygen we need to survive.

Two years ago, the staff of Bishop Heber High School carried out a survey to find out their Carbon footprint and discovered that, to become carbon neutral, we needed to plant 2000 mature trees! Since then 100 trees have been planted around the school grounds – well, “every little helps!” Today we hoped to add to that number with Rowan and Red Cherry trees and, even though the spring weather had other ideas, we managed to get outside at lunch time with our trowels and gardening gloves. Hopefully this will help to offset our carbon emissions and protect our local environment for years to come. If every home and company was to plant enough trees to offset most, if not all of their carbon emissions, do you think we could tackle climate change once and for all?