For the love of trees

It is estimated that there are approximately 3 trillion trees throughout the world!

As we prepare for the ‘National Day of Tree Planting’ in Guyana, I thought it is wise to share this extract from an article that a friend sent me.

Earlier in this year, media houses across the world covered a study in nature and found out that the world has over 3 trillion trees! Wow! This is very interesting.

20130908peggyThe research was led by Mr Thomas Crowther of Yale University, who said: “This research provided an entirely different way of looking at the world – in terms of what you call ‘tree wealth’ or ‘tree resources’.

Indeed having lots of trees in a country provides a host of benefits – as the trees are both a natural resource and asset to humans.”

The world’s overall tree leader is Russia, which has some 642 billion trees. It is followed by Canada with 318 billion trees; Brazil, 302 billion and the USA, 228 billion.

Other countries with high numbers of trees include: China with 140 billion; DR Congo, 101 billion; Indonesia, 81 billion and Australia 77 billion.

As we know, trees combat air pollution, absorb carbon dioxide and purify the air that we breathe in. Trees also filter water and a large section of the world’s population depends on the forest for food and wood.

It is interesting to note that while other countries are planting and protecting their trees, the tree cutters and butchers in Georgetown continue to brutalize our trees after years of neglect.

I sincerely hope those in charge of the tree planting exercise have put in place a maintenance plan and would also be providing protective tree boxes to prevent the animals from destroying and eating the trees.

Let us all support the tree planting exercise and raise the awareness and importance of our trees.

Until next week, Happy Garden-ing.