Here’s a great stat from Wikipedia on the resources the show brings to bear for their projects:

“At every makeover, thousands of people participate by donating their time, money, and help. By the beginning of the show’s seventh season, an estimated 500,000 Americans had helped with the show.”

We are currently attempting to employ ABC’s strategy for an “Extreme Reforestation Makeover”! We’ve been blessed with tremendous support with planting 44,000,000+ trees to date, but in keeping with the TV show analogy, we’re at the initial stage where we’ve selected the family and we’re putting them in a car to take them to the airport to go to Disneyland for the week while we get to work. We’re just about to level the house and really get down to business here! We currently have 951 MyEden members. These are people who have either made a one-time contribution of $10 or more to plant trees, or have committed to support our efforts on a monthly basis. Both are very much appreciated and very much necessary. Like the ABC show we too are in our seventh season, and it takes several thousand people to get the job done week in and week out. What we’re focused on now is getting to our first 1,000 members by June 1st and 1,500 by December 31st 2012. This is aggressive as we don’t have 9-10 million viewers per week to spread the word, but we know it can be done with your help! Yes, this is the time for viewer participation…We’re not necessarily asking you to give more. We’re simply asking you to share more. Take a minute to invite some like minded friends.

Thank you for your continued support!

植物樹拯救生命   (Plant trees | Save Lives)

There’s one tree in the world that is so cool that its location is kept secret for its own protection.

This tree has a name. Methuselah. Methuselah started life in 2832 BC—hundreds of years before the pyramids were built. Later this year, it will celebrate its 4,844th birthday. This makes Methuselah the oldest tree in the world. A Bristlecone Pine, it lives somewhere in the White Mountains between Death Valley and Sequoia National Park in eastern California.

But why does its location need to be kept classified? Because the U.S. Forest Service is convinced that if it’s location was made public—people would vandalize it—even try to cut it down.

So this summer—I’m organizing an expedition to track it down. Who’s with me?

The Eden Projects has a growing number of European, Australian, and Canadians aligning themselves with our already diverse list of individuals and groups that support the idea of “Planting Trees and Saving Lives.”  With the increase in diversity comes a broadening of motivation. Do we care more about people, or environment, or both? There appears to be an even split between those who are primarily motivated by planting millions of trees, and those whose focus is more on alleviating poverty and oppression.

Lately we have noted that our overseas partners tend to be concerned by climate change. Historically, we have tried to avoid getting trapped by the global warming debate that is still being waged in the United States. Our reasons for avoiding the issue are twofold:

- First, we don’t want to distract people from the urgent need to care for those who suffer the consequence of extreme poverty and the oppression that goes along with environmental destruction.

- Second, the simple fact remains that the millions of trees being planted by The Eden Projects each month are absorbing carbon regardless of one’s view on the climate change issue.

The really cool fact (pun intended) is the 1.5 million trees we plant each month in Madagascar qualify as one of the best natural carbon absorbers on the planet.  This is a great article that describes the amazing carbon absorbing qualities of mangrove trees.

One declared cause of global warming from the past that we no longer have to be concerned about is gasses emitted by dinosaurs. If you want more information about this disturbing subject, check out this article.

The bottom line (pun intended again) is hiring the poor to plant trees has the capacity to support all of our individual motivations, and then some. Except for those who are concerned over dino-gas. You are on your own for that one!

-Steve

We are asked on a regular basis, “what is the survival rate of the trees you plant at the reforestation site?” The specific answer varies somewhat from nation to nation and also as the conditions change with our many reforestation sites, but I’ll quickly summarize so you and I don’t get bored reading a long blog.

After working in Ethiopia for 7.5 years, we are pleased to report that the survival rate of the seedlings you have planted lands around 75%. However, we have also observed an additional 15% natural regeneration rate, which brings the overall total to 90%. Most reforestation managers would consider this to be a spectacular rate of survival.

In Madagascar the survival rate is slightly better and lands around 85%. However and again, when you add the 10% natural regeneration rate, that brings the total up to a whopping 95%, which is fantastic!

In closing out this uber-fascinating blog, I want to quickly explain the concept of natural regeneration. It’s simple. These are trees that Eden did not plant, but they are nevertheless growing at the reforestation sites all on their own. How did those trees manage to grow all on their own? It’s no mystery. A lot of them are the result of “bird activity”, which is a nice way to say that birds pooped out the seeds. Thank you little birdies for letting loose over our reforestation sites. We appreciate the fertilizer and increased tree species diversity. The majority of the other natural regeneration trees are the result of remnant seeds or tree roots lying dormant in the ground. They were just waiting for favorable conditions to come along again.

So, let’s keep hiring workers to plant millions more trees, and let’s continue to encourage overhead bird flights and remnant seeds/roots to spring back to life.

- Steve Fitch, President/Founder

A few days ago we were sitting in the office bantering about how we should celebrate the milestone.  Fireworks?  Probably SLIGHTLY out of the budget.  A massive party complete with waiters in tails, fancy appetizers, and a live band?  Ooooh—also out of the budget.  Then it happened—Steve reminded me we don’t actually have a line in the budget marked ‘fireworks,’ ‘parties,’ or the like.  Hmmm…

So here’s the audience (reader) participation part of this post.  What was the last milestone YOU celebrated in life?  How’d you celebrate?  And lastly, what would YOU do to celebrate the 50 million tree milestone?

Long story short – we are extremely grateful for all that you do. We shall not however rest on our laurels. We currently have the capacity and infrastructure in place to increase our planting to closer to 50,000,000 trees a year, which is more than a tree per second!  It is our goal to get to that number ASAP.

If you are a Social Media Savvy Philanthropist we would greatly appreciate you spreading the word about us today on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest!  It’s free, it takes a few seconds, and voila The Power of Ten happens via the social web! We have some BHAG’s (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) for 2012 and beyond. Like everything else we’ve done to date, we can’t do it without you.

Thank you once again for your continued support in Planting Trees and Saving Lives.  Have a blessed Arbor Day!

There is so much doom and gloom environmentalism these days, but the fact remains that there are enough resources to reforest the entire planet within our lifetime if a decent number of us cared as much about the poor and planet as we do about feeding our pets. Here is a simple fact: $15 billion is enough money to hire millions of people in Africa, Asia, Haiti, etc to play 150 billion trees per year at ten cents per tree. Please understand, I love animals! Feed your pets, please…even your cat. But, why not add $10 or $20 per month to your budget so you can hire a desperately poor human to plant trees?

Think about it; every $10 will hire a worker to plant a minimum of 100 trees. If one million of us were to commit to an average of $15 per month, that translates into 1.8 billion trees per year, and million of people lifted out of extreme poverty.

Please take 90 seconds to watch this video about how every day can become Earth day and Arbor day for you and your family. Earth Day Video    Then go out and feed Rover and Fluffy

Every Day can be Earth Day.  Every Day is Compassion Day.

-Steve Fitch

At Eden, where I’ve recently started to work, EVERY day is Earth Day. OUR pledge is to plant as many trees as we possibly can. Why?

Some fun Earthy Day factoids–

-The average American uses 7 trees/year in paper, wood, & other products

-The current population of America is 311,591,917

Can you see where this is going?

-Just to supply the USA, 2.2 BILLION trees need to be cut down every year

-In other words, to make the stuff we use in this country, nearly 6 MILLION trees are cut down every single day of the year. Including Christmas. And Valentine’s day.

Big numbers are overwhelming. But since Earth Day is all about getting involved and making a difference–let’s do something about it. I’m on the Earth Day website right now. I’m pledging to try to convince 100 people to give $10 each to plant 100 trees each. Any chance you’d be willing to be one of those people?

But this place still lived up to its amazing sounding name as it was a low altitude rainforest filled with out-of-this-world creatures, as well as primary and secondary forests! I was so impressed by our guide Andry, who led us through mazes of thick forest as if it was his home.

On one walk, Andry tapped a tree where there were some dead leaves and revealed to us a leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus phantasticus) that blended in so well we couldn’t even find it when he pointed straight at it. We also saw bright colored weevil bugs, endangered golden bamboo lemurs, chameleons of many kinds, beautiful orchids, waterfalls, rickety bridge crossings to special picnic sites, and even a few cockroaches (they were everywhere).

During a few night walks we were amazed by the glowing eyes of the brown mouse lemurs (Microcebus rufus). We chased them with our flashlights, watching them curiously hopping from branch to branch, waking up sleeping chameleons hanging with their long tails curled around low hanging branches.

This weekend opened our eyes to the lushness, the biodiversity, and the richness of Madagascar’s land, bringing us closer to understanding what makes Madagascar and its people so unique and important!

Thanks for reading!

Elizabeth & Nolan