When it comes to climate heroes, almost everyone is a hypocrite—no matter how much we rally around the environment, bring awareness to the problems, and try to give our time and money to help solve these problems, most of us are still having an impact. Whether it be driving our cars, eating too much red meat, or forgetting our reusable container, everyone has a tangible effect on the natural world with their actions.
In 2017, here at Mountain Life we decided it was time to give back. Spawned on a hike with a few forest engineers, our creative director Amelie Legare had an idea—let’s put back what we are taking out. As a print publication, one of the biggest parts of our footprint is the amount of paper we print, so we came up with an idea: Put that paper back into the ground.
In an effort to offset the paper we had used in 10 plus years of print publications, we planted 6,100 Western Red Cedar “plugs” with the help of some magazine staff, friends and family. With the help of Diamond Head Consulting, we were able to get our hands on the trees, and a location was chosen: the 2010 Meager Creek Lanslide about 60 kilometres North of Pemberton. They went, they planted, and they rejoiced—but that wasn’t the end of the work.
Last week, a crew went out to check up on the progress and were happy to see some positive things happening up north.
“I’m happy to report that our western red cedars appear to be doing very well!” reported Legare. “They are not very tall but they are green, bushy and going strong and I didn’t find a single dead specimen so it’s really really cool!”
It’s not going to change the world, but planting these trees is a start at giving back to the natural world that has given us, our contributors, and our readers here at Mountain Life so much. —ML
Check out the full piece on our tree-planting excursion featured in Mountain Life Coast Mountains here.
