Locals take part in attempt to win tree-planting world record
By Contributor
Sixty-seven volunteers and forest professionals planted 8,227 seedlings Wednesday at two Interfor harvesting locations in British Columbia’s Southern Interior as part of a North America-wide effort to set a world record for the most trees planted simultaneously in an hour.
Employees from Interfor and Greenpeaks Resource Management Ltd. planted Spruce, Douglas-Fir, Western Red Cedar, Larch and White Pine seedlings at Windfall Creek near Greenwood and Oatscott Road, east of Whatshan Lake. At Windfall Creek, they were joined by students, teachers and parents from Dr. D.A. Perley Elementary School.
The initiative was organized by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Inc. (SFI), an independent, non-profit organization that promotes sustainable forest management through standards, research, conservation partnerships and community building. A total of 28 teams, each with 25 to 100 people, planted over 200,000 seedlings at locations from New York City to Minnesota to Vancouver Island.
“We regenerate all our harvest areas promptly,” Randy Waterous, Forestry and Land Use superintendent for Interfor’s BC Interior Operations, said Wednesday. “This is an important part of responsible forest management, and one of the ways we support a healthy environment and economy.” Interfor plants nearly six million seedlings every year in BC’s Interior, and 8.5 million seedlings across the province.
“This world record attempt is a wonderful way to highlight that SFI is more than a forest certification standard — it’s a diverse community that stands for future forests,” said Kathy Abusow, SFI’s president and CEO. “Interfor is an excellent example of this community commitment to local forests. In British Columbia, Interfor has 2.8 million hectares certified to the SFI standard, and all of its BC mills have SFI chain-of-custody certification.”
Once the teams submit their results to Guinness World Records, they should learn in six to eight weeks whether it will include the new category. There is currently a category for the most trees planted in an hour at one location by 100 people – the record is 40,885.
