Trees For Life (Australia)

Trees For Life is a not for profit, wholly South Australian community organisation established in 1981 to promote and assist the revegetation of South Australia and to protect its remnant vegetation.

Trees For Life has developed programs in response to community demand and environmental need. The organisation has over 10,000 members, of these over 3000 are involved in a volunteer capacity as either volunteer growers, in bushland management, seed collection, seed packaging, distribution of materials, mail outs and office work.

The continued active engagement by members as a voluntary workforce is an extraordinary achievement sustained over 27 years and recognised nationally.

Community driven, non-political and not for profit, Trees For Life is the largest volunteer organisation of its type in Australia, and is recognised for the integrity of its programs and its environmental achievements.

Since its inception, Trees For Life’s programs have raised community awareness, and increased the understanding of the need for revegetation and bushland protection.

Trees For Life has the following revegetation and vegetation protection programs:

* Providing local native seedlings for revegetation to landholders at below cost. 1900 volunteers and landholders grow 1 million seedlings annually (27 m grown to date)
* Volunteers collect 200 species of provenance seed for revegetation
* Training and supporting 300 community volunteers and landholders annually (650 currently long term active volunteers) who manage over 3800 ha of significant bushland using minimal disturbance techniques
* Broadscale revegetation - 2500 kilometres of cleared land across the state revegetated using this methodology
* Biodiversity plantings for carbon offsets

South Australia has a legacy of excessive land clearing. The long term effects of this include loss of biodiversity, plant and animal extinction, soil erosion, increased salinity, reduced water quality and weed invasion. As the number of monoculture plantings increases, there are environmental fears that the long term effects of this style of single species plantings will have damaging effects for the environment. Biodiverse carbon offset plantings is a specialised program delivered by Trees For Life.

References

External links

* [http://www.treesforlife.org.au/home/ Trees For Life]
* [http://www.treesforlife.org.au/ourwork/thetreescheme/ The Tree Scheme program]
* [http://www.treesforlife.org.au/volunteers/seedcollectors/ Seed Collection program]
* [http://www.treesforlife.org.au/ourwork/bushforlife/ Bush For Life program]
* [http://www.treesforlife.org.au/ourwork/research/ Direct Seeding program]
* [http://www.treesforlife.org.au/ourwork/carbonneutral/ Carbon Neutral program]