How to Plant 20 MILLION TREES - Smarter Every Day 227 #TeamTrees
- Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. There's a really cool thing happening on the internet right now and we want you to be a part. It's called Team Trees, and the goal is simple: 20 million trees by 2020, and we actually have a mechanism to do this. If you go to teamtrees.org, the Arbor Day Foundation has agreed to plant one tree in the ground for every dollar that's donated there. That is a huge opportunity, and internet content creators from all over, every genre of content, are all working together to do this, but we need you. We need you to help us do this by going to teamtrees.org and donating.
Let's say that we're all on board and we're all awesome and we make this happen. $20 million go to the Arbor Day Foundation, and they're gonna plant 20 million trees. How do we do that scientifically? In order to figure this out, I wanna look at this whole concept through the eyes of my granddaddy, who attempted to plant hundreds of trees in a field back in the 60s. My dad was there, and he remembers exactly what happened. (beep)
Early 60s, '61, '62, Daddy had a group of students from Auburn come and plant some longleaf pines. They planted them in different methods, some in a hill, some in a furrow, hundreds of them. And only two of them lived.
Why did Auburn University come here to plant trees in this field?
It's not native to this area, and Auburn wanted to see if a longleaf pine could survive this far north.
[Destin Voiceover] The fact that longleaf pines were planted here is super interesting because Granddaddy's land was just north of the natural range for that species. Whenever I travel to different regions of the world, I love to discover what tree species thrive in that environment, whether it be a strangler fig in Peru, a baobab tree in western Africa, or the famous Recoleta rubber tree in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Certain species of trees always seem to thrive in certain areas.
To learn more about why certain trees thrive in specific environments, I went to Auburn University School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, where I met with Dr. Becky Barlow and Dr. John Kush. Both are experts in sustainable forestry and both know a ton about the longleaf pine.
[Destin] How does a person find the right tree for the right location? Let's say someone lives in Ohio, for example, or they live in, I don't know, Wyoming, and they need to figure out the exact tree they need to plant on their property.
The first thing that they need to do is, like Dr. Kush was saying, you need to think about the soils. You need to think about what soils you have. You need to think about what you are willing to do from a management standpoint. How active are you willing to be in the management of your property? Some people just wanna plant it and walk away and not have to do anything to it. And that's okay too, and there are certain things you can do from that standpoint.
But most of the time, you're gonna have to plant it. Then you're gonna have to monitor it, and you're gonna have to maybe do some thinnings in there to make sure that the trees have enough water, light, and nutrients to grow because they start to get too crowded, and then they're gonna start to die naturally. And so you wanna thin it so you don't have that natural mortality. You can actually capture that mortality.
[Destin] So there's science to it?
Yeah, a lot. And you also need to know about the trees. You need to think about the tree that you want to plant and think about its life history, its silvics is what it's called.
[Destin] How do you spell that?
S-I-L-V-I-C-S. It's kind of its life history. Where does it normally occur? Where does it naturally occur? How does it grow? How tall does it get? Does it need a lot of sunlight, or can it tolerate shade? It's those things like that that you need to understand about the trees that you're wanting to plant, and then making sure you, again, that's how you match the tree to your site.
[Destin Voiceover] Dr. Kush pulled up a soil survey from Granddaddy's land and explained that the different types of soil affect how trees grow differently. He said the main factor, however, was probably that Granddaddy planted them in a grassy area where the weeds probably choked out the trees.
[Destin] So longleaf pine?
Longleaf pine.
[Destin] What do I need to know?
Burn it. (Destin laughs)
What?
Burn it.
[Destin] What do you mean?
Plant it, burn it.
[Destin] What do you mean?
You gotta use prescribed fire, get your little area cleaned out, get your trees planted, wait a year, burn it.
[Destin] So you're talking about the undergrowth?
The undergrowth.
[Destin] Okay, so you're not saying, "Cut the tree down and burn it."
No, don't cut the tree down. Please don't cut the tree. We're doing too much of that already.
[Destin] Okay, so fires can be a good thing if they're done correctly, is what you're saying?
Fires are an excellent thing if done correctly. But we have to do it correctly.
[Destin] What do you mean?
You have to prescribe, get your conditions right, prescribe the fire, get a burn permit from the Forestry Commission, and do what's right for nature. You're just mimicking what nature did. If we weren't here, it would be happening. If you have nobody here, get away all the people, all the roads, and you just have wildlife out there, a lightning strike hits a tree, starts a fire. It'd go for miles, tens of miles, hundreds of miles. So the southeast was seeing fire very frequently, and thus you had longleaf pine there.
[Destin Voiceover] Dr. Kush explained to me that the longleaf pine is different. He explained that it has adapted the ability to actually be burned during its first few years of life. Dr. Barlow and Dr. Kush took me outside to see actual longleaf pines and explain how they work.
We actually have a longleaf pine in the grass stage here.
[Dr. Kush] I planted this four years ago. The idea of trying to bring longleaf pine back to this site. It passed the stage where it doesn't really put out any woody extension growth like all trees do. It waits for its chance to take fires for a couple of years, and then that central bud, it will one day decide that it's time to come out of the grass stage, and off it will go.
[Destin] Really? That is not...
What that—
[Destin] That is not what I think of when I think of a small tree.
It is not. Any longleaf pine this size can take fire. Any other tree will die.
[Destin] So that's why it exists like this.
That's why it exists like this. And then when it comes out of that grass stage, it'll put on four or five feet of growth in that year, get its quote unquote head above the fire, and it just hangs out for the next three, four hundred years.
[Destin] So this is just a completely different strategy for survival?
Absolutely. Unique in the world.
[Destin Voiceover] When the longleaf pine is in the grass stage, it's busy making a very deep taproot, which also means it's drought resistant. Check out the comparison of this loblolly pine and this longleaf pine.
This is only two years old, and that's four years old.
[Destin] We're in 35 days of drought. Did this die recently?
Yeah, this probably just happened within the last three or four days.
[Destin] Oh really?
Yeah.
[Destin] So we've got some real data here.
This is real data. This is actual.
[Destin] Loblolly pine died because of the drought. The longleaf pine is just kicking it.
He's just hanging out saying, "I'm not quite ready to come out of the grass stage." What that trigger's gonna be, nobody knows but—
[Destin] At some point it’s gonna figure it out.
My guess, just based on the size now, is it's gonna come out next year.
[Destin Voiceover] Odd as it might sound, talking to Dr. Kush and Dr. Barlow taught me that one of the reasons Granddaddy's trees might have died would’ve been lack of fire. Four days after visiting Auburn University, I'm driving across northern Florida. Trees on the left side of the road are tall and healthy, but they have burned trunks. Trees on the right side of the road are crowded, and they look like scrub brush. It all clicked when I saw this sign.
I could not have planned this if I tried. Turns out, there's a place down here called the E.O. Wilson Biophilia Center. They're all about the longleaf pine, and I have to show you what I learned. These people are awesome. This is Ashlyn. (Ashlyn laughs) I just found this place. And I'm seeing that right there, which leads me to believe that you guys believe in burning to promote longleaf pine health, is that right?
Very controlled burning.
[Destin] Controlled burning. (Ashlyn laughs) But the whole idea is to get the fuel at the bottom of the ecosystem to take out all the scrub brush, right?
Exactly, yes.
[Destin] Cool, and you said there's somebody I can talk to?
Yeah, definitely, we'll find Bob.
'Kay, we're gonna go see Turtle Bob, who knows about burning longleaf pines.
Hi.
[Destin] Nice to meet you. So you know about burning longleaf pines?
Well, we've burned a few. (laughter)
[Ashlyn] Planted a few as well.
Fire is important to keep the longleaf pine ecosystem alive because to start with, it requires bare mineral soil to start germinating. And then what it does is it opens it up enough for gopher tortoises to survive. Gopher tortoises have to have an open habitat.
[Ashlyn] This is a gopher tortoise.
[Destin] And these are the turtles, or they're not turtles, they're tortoises, that make the burrows, right?
Yes.
[Destin] And they make the burrows as a result of the longleaf pine?
They do make it in that nice open sandy soil that can be found in the longleaf pine ecosystem. They dig those burrows really far into the ground, and it's not only important for them, but they are a keystone species because they're gonna dig those burrows which can house up to 200 or 350 other species, especially during those fires.
[Destin] She's waving.
Those animals need places to go. Really good place to do that is gonna be a big hole in the ground.
[Destin Voiceover] Ashlyn took me out into the forest and showed me several young longleaf pines in the grass stage and then the secondary stage known as the bottle brush phase, which then leads to the sapling phase and finally the mature trees. Ashlyn took me out further into the forest to show me the holes that the gopher tortoises dig, and this is where it all came together.
Because this tree can survive fire, the underbrush gets cleared away, which paves way for this turtle to gain access to the forest floor where it can dig these holes. As Burning Bob explained, these holes support hundreds of other species that are then able to live on the forest floor, which creates an ecosystem that can sustain even larger umbrella species such as the black bear.
So it isn't about a single tree, it's about an entire ecosystem. An ecosystem that takes advantage of one particular tree's ability to survive fire.
[Destin] So this is what the natural forest looks like?
Yes, if we didn't burn it, lightning would. And then it would eventually have this nice open clear area. Lots of room for the wildlife to live in compared to this side.
[Destin] But this side. (Destin laughs)
Lots of different kinds of trees. We've got some slash pines, we've got some oak trees, yaupon hollies, taking over, kind of crowding out some of those other pine trees that would typically be here. And then there's a ton of leaf litter on the ground. We actually call that pine straw our fuel load. If lightning were to strike that right now, it would burn entirely too hot, entirely too quick, and would definitely turn into a wildfire, which would be very bad.
So if I were to decide to plant a tree, what would you tell me? What do I need to know?
I would say plant a longleaf if you live in an area that’ll sustain a longleaf. You're gonna need to be upland, not too wet. Definitely stick to the native plants.
So look at the local environment and the ecosystem and identify the silvics of the trees in your area and figure out what trees will grow there, and then pick something like that, you'd say?
Yeah, something that's a lot of different animals are gonna use.
Okay, so think about the whole ecosystem. Don't just think about the one tree.
Yeah, it doesn't have to look pretty, but it has a job. (laughter)
Teamtrees.org, that's the whole point of this entire video. We've partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation because they are the experts. They understand the silvics, they know exactly what tree to plant in what location, and the goal is simple. We want to raise $20 million for 20 million trees by 2020. And to do that, we're gonna need your help.
And I would encourage you to consider going to teamtrees.org and donating, or right here on the YouTube page, there's a donate button below. If you use that, YouTube's gonna pay for the transaction fees. This is a huge thing that we're all doing together. It is rare to have the opportunity to plant one tree for one dollar, so I'm gonna take advantage of that.
I don't know if you've ever planted a tree. It's kind of expensive to go buy an individual tree and put it in the ground, but at this kind of scale, you can literally plant a thousand trees for a thousand dollars, or a hundred trees for a hundred dollars, or 10 trees for 10 dollars. Your money goes a really long way to help the environment. So if you're interested in doing that, teamtrees.org or click the button below to donate here on YouTube. In fact, the sponsor for this video, Hello Fresh, they've agreed to donate $5000 to plant 5000 trees.
(beep) This episode of Smarter Every Day and my donation to teamtrees.org is sponsored by Hello Fresh, and you're gonna help today, Dad?
I'm gonna try.
[Destin] I don't ever think you've cooked in front of me. Maybe—
Hot dogs and eggs is all I know.
[Destin] All right, okay, there we go. Today we're gonna do pineapple poblano beef tacos and we're gonna cook for Mom. You think we can do this? You've assembled spacecraft.
I have.
[Destin] We can do this. Got our meats, got our ingredients. Let's get to chopping. Hello Fresh is a home meal kit delivery system that sends you fresh ingredients to your house. You can cook it, it's really simple. Just follow the instructions, and you can make a delicious meal for your family.
Poblano.
Poblano.
[Destin Voiceover] If you want to make Hello Fresh at your house, you can get it by going to hellofresh.com and using the promo code smarter80 at checkout. That gets you 80 bucks off the first month of Hello Fresh, which is like eight free meals. That is a lot of food and a lot of savings.
Drizzle? Oh.
[Destin] Oh?
Oh? (laughter)
[Destin] You're the one I got it from. (Darryl laughs) Hello Fresh is now from $5.66 per serving, so you can feed your family delicious food at an affordable price. All right, moment of truth. What do you think?
It's good.
Big thanks to Hello Fresh for sponsoring this. A big portion of this sponsorship is gonna go towards trees at teamtrees.org.
(beep) Please consider going to teamtrees.org and joining Team Trees. Also, go check out all these other videos these other creators are making. We're all in this together. We are trying to do this huge movement together, and we need you on Team Trees.
So that's it! I'm Destin, you're getting smarter every day. Have a good one. Bye.