INDIAN HEAD, Sask. – Sherman Nelson would have made a good cheerleader.
Standing on a podium in the farmyard of Em and Maureen Anderson, north of Indian Head, Sask., the acting director general of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration is encouraging children to yell.
The students from Indian Head Elementary School need little prompting.
“Six hundred millionth,” they shout, louder and louder at Nelson’s urging.
The occasion is the planting of the 600 millionth seedling provided by the PFRA’s shelterbelt program. The tiny Scots pine looks like every other, but its significance is huge.
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Nelson has a question for the children. How many times would 600 million trees go around the Earth at the equator? He provides a hint: more than 10 but less than 100.
The answer is 27.
All those trees were planted in Western Canada beginning in 1901. More than 700,000 clients have obtained trees from the shelterbelt centre at Indian Head and planted them from northern British Columbia to eastern Manitoba.
“It’s really the farmers who have done the work,” Nelson said.
Those trees have removed 218 mega tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air.
Em Anderson couldn’t say exactly how many trees are planted on his farm, which was established in 1898 three years before the shelterbelt centre began its successful program.
“Probably easily 1,000,” he says, looking around the yard.
But all of them came from the centre over the years.
Last year, the Andersons planted 300 more, filling in spots between trees that are nearing the century mark. Some of the bigger ones have already succumbed to old age.
The Andersons value the trees for privacy, protection from the wind and trapping snow to keep their lane clear. Before they were on the town water supply system, they also needed the trees to trap snowfall for dams.
Celebrating and planting a tree along with young children is appropriate, Nelson added, because both the trees and the children will make long-lasting contributions to the environment.
Annually, the shelterbelt centre ships about five million trees to clients. Research is developing new varieties to meet demand for bioproducts and biofuel just as it did to find trees that made good shelterbelts.
The Scots pine planted last week represents one of the first varieties ever distributed by PFRA. It didn’t survive well, and it took 30 years of development to produce a Scots pine that now thrives across the Prairies.
The shelterbelt centre also distributes Colorado spruce, white spruce, caragana, willow, hybrid poplar, green ash, bur oak, villosa lilac, chokecherry, silver buffaloberry and sea buckthorn.
