This summer, 350Vermont is launching a project to plant 100,000 trees across Vermont by the end of 2022. Rewild Vermont strives to build on synergies between food justice, climate action, and ecological restoration to grow healthier, more just futures for Vermont. Volunteers will plant, protect, and care for an array of native and food-producing species, developing local projects that restore degraded parts of their ecosystems and provide sustenance for vulnerable members of their communities. 350VT state organizers, meanwhile, are working with partners like nurseries, conservation districts, and other nonprofit organizations to secure affordable bulk seedlings and statewide support.
Priority sites for planting include riparian zones, habitat corridors, and public spaces where fruit, nut, and medicinal species can be accessible to all. Planting is set to begin this fall, then accelerate with bulk seedling orders and plantings in the spring of 2021, but some local groups have already started on the project.
One local 350VT group, Climate Advocates Bennington, is already organizing the planting of food forests and orchards at their local middle school, town park and wildlife management area. 350Brattleboro, meanwhile, planted 300 nut trees on Earth Day this year.
The Rewild Vermont project is part of 350VT’s campaign to Put Carbon in the Ground and develop local, regenerative solutions to the climate emergency. It also draws on new research showing that filling all available non-urban and non-agricultural land with native trees could absorb an “astounding” two-thirds of the anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere.