The Miyawaki Method: A Better Way to Build Forests? (2019)
Any ecologist would tell you that trees plant themselves if left alone. The real question is not how to get people to plant trees, it's how to get people to leave trees and the areas where they will grow alone.<p>That's in the majority of places where trees would normally grow. Of course in some ecosystems like a full desert, we can help nature do it's thing. And we can also help along the natural process by selectively planting additional species. In the US tree planting is about foresty not nature or the environment. Forestry is the planting and managing trees for economic gain, usually for pulp or lumber often by planting only one or two species.<p>So, another misleading thing would be that forestry involves planting several times as many trees and then weeding, culling, thinning out the trees. So one misleading statistic you will find is something like "we planted 1 million trees", where the actual number of trees finally will be something like 100,000.<p>Trees come with their own built in reproductive system via seeds, acorn and the like. The urge to plant forests is a human urge to meddle and fix things. This urge is also the reason why the forests were cleared and nature curtailed. This urge should, in most of the world, be resisted if we are to let nature do it's own thing.