Local Scouts across the UK will be teaming up with the Woodland Trust, the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity, to plant thousands of trees.
As part of the Scout's Centenary celebrations, the Woodland Trust and the Scout Association have formed a partnership, ‘Scouts for Trees’, to provide members of the Scouts with a number of opportunities to learn about, and engage in, woodland conservation. Over the next few years, the Woodland Trust will offer a series of activities and events for Scouts. This initiative is part of the Trust’s Tree For All campaign, which aims to involve one million children in planting 12 million trees.
Andy Beer of the Woodland Trust comments: “Tree For All is a call to action in a time when the protection and planting of new woodland is becoming increasingly important as our natural world comes under siege. ‘Scouts for Trees’ is a great opportunity to get involved with a UK wide organisation to help us reach out to more and more young people. With the help of the Scout Association we aim to plant at least 100 Centenary Groves – these will be new areas of native woodland, each made up of thousands of trees.”
The Tree For All campaign has involved over 516,881 people, the majority being school children, and has planted three and a half million trees across the UK, that’s enough people to fill the Albert Hall 103 times or 7178 double decker buses. In all, approximately 9000 schools, 534 community groups and 100 major partners have been involved so far, not to mention celebrities including Dame Judi Dench, Ray Mears and Penny Smith, and it’s just getting started. In all since the campaign started over 1,618 hectares (4000 acres) of new woodland has been created.
