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Iceland's attempts to replant its forests
- terda12 9y agoJust wanted to say, props to NYT for the beautifully designed article.
- eatonphil 9y agoThis is one of the coolest articles I've ever seen. The subtle high-res videos are a really great complement to the content.
- Normal_gaussian 9y agoAnd they lagged like nobodies business when they were loading despite having 11Mbps down all to myself.
- krallja 9y ago11Mbps is less than half the FCC's definition of broadband: 25Mbps down.
- peeters 9y agoIIRC Netflix's absolute highest bitrate is 15.6 Mbps (for 4k). This is ~5 seconds of much less than 4k.
- the8472 9y ago> 15.6 Mbps (for 4k) That must be laughable quality. 1080p blurays easily clock in at more than 22Mbit/s for grainy content, the spec allows 40Mbit/s. And that's not even including the audio. UHD discs must deliver at least 82Mbit/s. And a lot of content is not even using the things that UHD standards allow to deliver (4:4:4 chroma instead of 4:2:0, higher framerates). So even if they're delivering in HEVC is suspect that the compression is not source-transparent.
- peeters 9y agoNetflix has pretty good compression but yeah this is why I canceled my 4k subscription when they announced they were raising prices. I think 4k is currently $4/mo more and I have a gigabit connection. If they are going to charge 30% more for the privilege they shouldn't compress it to the point where it's not appreciably different from upscaling 1080p. Streaming services really frustrate me for that reason. I get that bandwidth costs money but when e.g. Play Movies advertises a movie rental for $5 but when that actually means $5 for SD (who the hell even uses SD) but $10 for UHD when it's compressed to shit, what service are you actually providing me?
- ivix 9y agoI had that speed in 2005 and it was slow then, too.
- zeveb 9y agoExcept, as I indicate in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15515968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15515968, the images are extraordinarily low-res with JavaScript turned off. 'Well, turn it on!' is certainly one solution, but of course enabling JavaScript doesn't just let me view images (something HTTP & HTML do just fine anyway), but also enables execution of potential malware, tracking & other nastiness.
- selectodude 9y agoThere are upsides and downsides to enabling Javascript. If you want to enjoy the NYT rich web content, you need to have it on. Just the way it is.
- godshatter 9y agoNot the person you were replying to, but if they want to sabotage my experience because I don't wish to be tracked or infected with malware, then that's their business I guess. I hope they don't expect me to think delightful thoughts about them for doing it.
- SolaceQuantum 9y agoShould they make two separate web pages, or rely only on less ornate tooling for a niche user base?
- godshatter 9y agoThey could just load the images and videos without the need for javascript. We know that they can do this, because they specifically made it show low-res versions for those without javascript. They went out of their way to handle this admittedly niche user base already, purposefully to make their experience worse.
- selectodude 9y agoMost people who don't have Javascript are using very old, antiquated browsers. The NYT cares enough about its lower-income and foreign readers to make it fail gracefully. I think that sending low-res photos makes infinitely more sense.
- interfixus 9y agoPossibly worth remembering: Iceland (and Greenland, where the vikings hung on until the fourteen hundreds) had significantly warmer climate a milennium ago.
- zeristor 9y agoIndeed the little ice age of the middle ages is what made Greenland uninhabitable. Birch is a pioneer species, they produce millions of seeds a year, they chased the retreating ice cap as melted northwards in Europe. It would appear they need to be planted out, perhaps they need soil to take. Otherwhise it should be a fairly simple case of just broadcasting billions of birch seeds over Iceland.
- interfixus 9y agoI know. I live among birches in soutern Scandinavia. One thing they need, though: Water, and plenty of it. I'm not really sure the Icelandic ground delivers.
- avar 9y agoGreenland didn't become uninhabitable during the little ice age, there's people living now in Greenland descended from people who survived that supposedly uninhabitable country. The Norse colony got wiped out, but it's unknown whether that was because of war, famine or some other reason. We just know life would have been hardier in those years. What little we do know suggests that they were unwilling to learn the traditional lifestyle from the natives, and the country became uninhabitable for anyone insisting on only using Norse farming methods.
- interfixus 9y agoPerhaps worth noting that the natives got wiped out too. Modern Greenlanders are descended from people arriving on the scene well after the Scandinavians did.
- avar 9y ago
- 23443463453 9y agoIt's funny how so many Liberal minded types are overrunning Iceland gushing about how beautiful and stark the landscape is, when in reality they don't realize they are admiring just another devastated landscape of Europe. It's a general bias Europeans heavily have as they laud the beauty and natural state of Europe, while there is really not a single natural old growth forest anywhere on the whole continent and most "natural" forests are planted as is usually, easily indicated by the trees that are evenly spaced and generally lined up even in "old" forests. In reality Europe is a landscaped stripped of snakes, barren of bears and wolves and deer and other fauna, while the forests and meadows are all artificial and man made. The reason I point this out is that when you can start suspending prior conditioning, you can start realizing this bias that has led to the self-righteousness of Europeans, environmentalists, and the social justice warriors that are ravaging the civilized world. Humans are a cluster of biases, ignorance, and blind spots; yes especially in the tech community that has a supremacist and self-righteous mentality about just about everything as it decimates the very society and culture that allowed it to emerge.
- Y_Y 9y agoWhat's your point? By the way, there are some very old forests still in Europe, I don't know if it makes them any better than ones that are only a hundred years old.
- ajuc 9y agoThere are still so called primeval forests in Europe. Meaning they have grown in that place as far as we (human race) remember. They are small and strictly protected. And yes, they are "better" on some metrics - the main difference is - whether the dead wood is removed from the forest or left there. There's lots of endangered species of birds, insects and even mammals that depend on dead wood, and industrialized forests (99% of what we have in Europe) doesn't have that. Also natural forests are much more resistant to devastation by one particular insect or sickness, because only strong trees remain, species of trees (and generations of trees) are mixed with each other. In industrialized forests (especially these created shortly after WW2) they just planted pine trees, all planted same year. When bark beetle has a "good" year - these forests have to be actively maintained (every tree attacked has to be removed before 2 weeks pass and beetles spread to nearby trees), or the whole forest dies in one year. Natural forests doesn't care, because weak, young trees of same species don't grow close enough for big epidemic. BTW I only know that because we have a heated political debate in Poland - current anti-ecology government is cutting down some part of semi-natural forest surrounding protected natural forest under the excuse that bark bettle is going to destroy it otherways. Scientists and ecologists protest, wood industry support the government. Even EU is involved.
- avar 9y agoFor reasons I won't go into the farming lobby is really strong in Iceland. Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. Thus the sheep range far and wide and destroy Iceland's native low-lying forests. Iceland's native crooked birch hasn't developed resistance to grazing animals as mainland trees had to do, the sheep love to nibble at them and eat the seedlings. The native trees and other native vegetation are generally much hardier than the foreign plants. But since the forestry service has lost the battle with the farming lobby they're desperately trying to introduce some trees that the sheep won't eat. Reforesting the country is largely being done through subsidies to farmers, who aren't concerned with topsoil preservation beyond maintaining the desolate landscape they inherited, but they are interested in the eventual promise of a commercial forest on their land. Which is something to keep in mind when reading articles like these and wondering "why don't they...", usually the answer is that they're planting in a field that's going to be full of grazing animals, and there's no way the forestry service is going to win that battle anytime soon, or that they're not really aiming to restore the topsoil per-se, but to do that as a side-effect of commercial logging. This page has some more details: http://www.skogur.is/english/forestry-in-a-treeless-land/ http://www.skogur.is/english/forestry-in-a-treeless-land/
- Isamu 9y agoI agree, you'd have to carefully protect your trees until they reach a reasonable size that they can hold their own. Sheep will definitely prevent reforestation, although they are less likely than goats to harm saplings of a certain size.
- mark-r 9y agoThe problem is that "carefully protect your trees" doesn't scale. And it's completely impossible for natural propagation, which is the only realistic way of meeting the goal of reforestation.
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- amorphid 9y ago> As a result, Iceland is a case study in desertification, with little or no vegetation, though the problem is not heat or drought. About 40 percent of the country is desert, Dr. Halldorsson said. “But there’s plenty of rainfall — we call it ‘wet desert.’” At first I thought it was an error to call an area that gets plenty of rain a desert. I thought desert was strictly defined by the amount of rainfall. But maybe that's not correct. The wikipedia article on desert states... "Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation that falls, by the temperature that prevails, by the causes of desertification or by their geographical location." [1] I wonder if there's a stricter definition used in a specific scientific context. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert
- kobeya 9y agoThe etymology of the word (think deserted island) would imply it has more to do with the lack of life than the reason for a lack of life.
- mitchtbaum 9y agoEtymology of desert: from Latin desertus, from desero (“abandon”) From dē- (“away, from”) + serō (“I bind, join”). From Proto-Italic sizō, from Proto-Indo-European si-sh₁-, the reduplicated present of *seh₁- (“to sow”). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desert#Etymology_3 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desert#Etymology_3 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desero#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desero#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sero#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sero#Latin
- guelo 9y agoIn verb and adjective form anything can be deserted, a husband deserting his wife, a deserted village. In noun form I've heard of things like food deserts to describe urban area without grocery or restaurants. Also places like Antartica are sometimes described as deserts. Also ocean deserts to describe areas without fish.
- Alex3917 9y agoMaybe there should be some sort of global chaga tax to fund birch reforestation. If a few bucks was added to every Amazon order or whatever then that would at least help out a bit.
- jamiegreen 9y agoAn Amazon tax to reforest the Amazon, nice.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoGood luck getting Amazon to pay reasonable taxes.
- mitchtbaum 9y agoThat rewards those who can creatively find a way to shop at Amazon despite taxes more so than it rewards those who can creatively plant trees despite every other hurdle to do so.
- Alex3917 9y agoI was proposing a chaga tax, not an Amazon tax. I was just using Amazon as an example of a retailer since they sell it.
- mitchtbaum 9y agoI thought chaga was a typo. Do you mean "chaga" the mushroom? Anyway, I meant my point about a key problem in general with trying to use taxes to fund important development projects.
- Alex3917 9y ago> Do you mean "chaga" the mushroom? Yes, because it only grows on birch trees, but harvesting the mushroom can damage the trees. That was sort of the point. :-)
- zeristor 9y agoSo is this a case of terraforming Iceland?
- ainiriand 9y agoI find quite interesting how we plan on terraform and colonize Mars when we can't even grow trees on Iceland.
- mitchtbaum 9y agoIn fairness, the article does mention several dedicated individuals; and who knows, they might inspire others - "many hands make light work".
- skj 9y agoThe farm lobby isn't standing in the way of terraforming Mars.
- gerbilly 9y agoWell maybe by the time we get there it will. The thing about mars is that we can't just export the parts of society we like and leave out the rest. When humans colonize a new 'utopia', we tend to bring all the normal human problems with us too.
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- zeveb 9y agoAs an aside, all the images are blurry with NoScript. Any idea how to get around this without enabling JavaScript (and bringing in all of its issues)?
- robin_reala 9y agoIf you’re OK with pixellated then add to your user CSS: .image img.g-lazy { filter: none !important; } If you want the originals and can run user JS then something like: window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded',() => { document.querySelectorAll('.media-viewer-candidate').forEach(el => { el.src = el.dataset['mediaviewer-src'] }) })
- mitchtbaum 9y ago<tldr> > When Iceland was first settled at the end of the ninth century, much of the land on or near the coast was covered in birch woodlands. > The settlers slashed and burned the forests to grow hay and barley, and to create grazing land. They used the timber for building and for charcoal for their forges. By most accounts, the island was largely deforested within three centuries. > The lack of trees, coupled with the ash and larger pieces of volcanic rock spewed by eruptions, has led to severe soil erosion. > The [recovery] process usually begins with lyme grass, which grows quickly and can stabilize the soil. Lupine, with its spiky purple flowers, is often next. The trees come later. > Mr. Jonsson and his volunteers then plant the appropriate species for the plot — birch, Sitka spruce, lodgepole pine, Russian larch or other species. “We’d love to plant aspen,” he said. “But sheep really love aspen.” > With vegetation unable to gain much of a foothold, farming and grazing have been next to impossible in many parts of the country. And the loose soil, combined with Iceland’s strong winds, has led to sandstorms that can further damage the land — and even blast the paint off cars. > No one expects that one-quarter of Iceland will ever be covered in forests again. But given slow growth rates and the enormity of the task, even more modest gains will take a long time, Mr. Thorvaldsson said. > “The aim now is that in the next 50 years we might go up to 5 percent,” he said. “But at the speed we’re at now, it would take 150 years to do that.”
- jameshart 9y agoWhen I was in Iceland, my tourguide told me the joke: - What do you do if you are lost in an Icelandic forest? - Stand up.
- SeanDav 9y agoJudging by the photo of those tiny 13 year-old pine trees planted in 2004 - that is not a joke, but a statement of fact.
- hackeraccount 9y agoI opened up the comments to make just that joke. I'm surprised the article didn't make it.
- ISKthrow 9y agoI heard the same joke from my Icelandic ex lol
- diego_moita 9y agoFor someone that lived in tropical places it is very awkward to see those videos on Iceland Air flights promoting tourism to Iceland and advertising its "rugged beauty", with lots of glaciers, geysers, volcanoes and ugly cold beaches with black sand. Sorry Icelanders, you seem to be lovely people but your country looks very ugly, barren, dead, sad and desolate. I can't see natural beauty without life.
- rainbowmverse 9y agoBeauty without life is mostly about textures. It's easy to miss if you're looking for bright colors and motion, don't find them, and stop looking.
- rootbear 9y agoI was there in August and found it beautiful. De gustibus non disputandum est.
- spodek 9y ago> I can't see natural beauty without life. Sunrise Sunset The moon The stars Clouds Waves on the beach Rugged peaks above the tree line Stalagmites and Stalactites Bubbling brooks I could go on, but that's a lot of natural beauty you say you can't see already.
- erikbye 9y agoLife does not equal beautiful vistas. Cities are full of life, but to me, they are often the ugliest of landscapes. While I find plenty of aesthetically pleasing natural landscapes, even desolate ones. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
- rconti 9y agoUpvoted because you're welcome to your opinion and I'm a bit sad to see this buried. You should visit. That doesn't mean you'll like it, but it's the most amazing place I've ever been. On the final approach to KEF, I looked out the window and all I could say was "no way". It's like nothing else. I found it absolutely stunningly gorgeous, and loved the place. It's at the top of my list of places to go back to -- over and over. There's life everywhere. The people are wonderful, there are animals everywhere, there are grasses and mosses and all kinds of life. So some of your statements are opinions, and others are merely factually wrong. I've only been a few tropical places, but frankly, I don't like them. Humidity is like hell on earth. I get as much enjoyment out of a cold black sand beach as a warm white sand one -- it bores the piss out of me to lay on a beach and do nothing, so I'm no more likely to spend time on a "nice" beach than on an "ugly" one. In fact I'd more happily spend an hour on a black sand beach photographing ice formations and looking for puffins than sitting in a beach chair sipping a pina colada.
- Robotbeat 9y agoI wonder if massive temporary greenhouses over sections of the land would help get trees established. It'd protect areas from wind (erosion), sheep, and cold temperatures until the soil was remediated and the trees were high enough to avoid hungry sheep. They already grow saplings in greenhouses.
- TheCowboy 9y agoThere are lots of solutions if scarcity of resources is not a problem. Building massive temporary greenhouses is likely limited by the economics: importing any materials, constructing them to be able to survive strong winds, irrigation, limiting life cycle CO2 emissions, and other issues unique to greenhouses. Since they grow saplings in greenhouses and take those out into the world, greenhouse space is likely economically constrained. It seems optimal to start a bunch of trees, and send them on their way, and keep the process going. They currently have a ban on imports of live trees, and lack restrictions on sheep grazing (learned per other comments on this post). These things alone might be less costly than constructing lots of temporary structures.
- mythz 9y agoThe most interesting part of this article is its amazing photography.
- lucaspiller 9y agoYeah this is one place where the autoplay videos are well done. Still, it would be nice to have a way to turn it off, if you are on a limited data connection.
- mitchtbaum 9y agoI can only think how to disable it using uMatrix. Sadly, that's not a setting to apply anywhere in a browser, like Webpage Media Size Limits or something. Perhaps uMatrix developers could help by adding a feature in its Options next to Privacy tab for Media.
- akeck 9y agoMaybe take an page from the Easter Islander playbook: Build vast networks of rock wall closed cells. Wind blowing over these will tend to deposit some of its soil. Bonus points if the walls are high enough to keep out sheep. ;-)
- ajmurmann 9y agoOn the Aran islands they did something similar with their walls. However, they also "made" soil by collecting kelp and mixing it with sand.
- zackmorris 9y agoMany islands are deserts because they don't have high enough elevation to catch moisture. In Hawaii a guy planted trees along a ridge line to pull moisture from the clouds and converted the climate. I can't remember his name or which island it was, this might be it: http://www.visitmauiblog.com/blog/pine-trees-lanai/ http://www.visitmauiblog.com/blog/pine-trees-lanai/
- ransom1538 9y agoThe island was lanai, HI. The ferry from maui to lanai during sunset is life changing. Trees: https://everything-everywhere.com/the-pine-trees-of-lanai/ https://everything-everywhere.com/the-pine-trees-of-lanai/
- kingkawn 9y agoLoss of symbiotic soil bacterial cultures?
- mitchtbaum 9y agoLoss of grass, afaict. They can't grow it back quickly enough to support the trees, because (1) native species grow slowly in arctic climates and state blocks potentially useful imports (2) loose sheep eat up young plants.
- calimac 9y agoThose darn vikings. They should have had more concern for their carbon footprint. Maybe the CEO of Solyndra could have led the vikings sustainable energy innitiative.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ccozan 9y agoIs this a case where robots could do almost all work? Define an area, load the saplings and send the robot to bore holes, put the sapling, fill, repeat.
- ccozan 9y agoI don't understand the downvotes. Can someone explain? Is a valid question, looking for an answer from a person with more knowledge.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- brohee 9y agoYour "solution" doesn't solve the "sappling being eaten by free roaming sheep" issue. Not the more complex issue of soil creation.
- mar77i 9y agoTrying is nature's way to be abundant. Just like you shouldn't spay the sheep just because the lamb might be eaten by a wolf.
- arnarbi 9y agoBecause it isn't a problem with planting. That's very easy, and people volunteer to do it. When I was a kid (I'm Icelandic) we'd go on field trips and plant hundreds. The problem is keeping the growth alive.
- mar77i 9y agoYou sound like you doubt the viability of automated and distributed tree planting which may be more statistically significant? I get your point that hundreds may not do, what about hundreds of thousands, then? Let's agree that we can't know as long as nobody tried. And you're right, we don't have the numbers on how the survivorship ratio in larger magnitudes would behave, it might just shrink to ridiculously small. But then again the soil would be slightly "improved" by a dead sapling, maybe even increasing the chances for another try?
- btilly 9y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Succeed-Revised/dp/0143117009 https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Succeed-Rev... by Jared Diamond goes into substantially more detail about why Iceland was so environmentally sensitive and what the damage was. It is well worth reading.
- rootbear 9y agoI was in Iceland recently and was told that if you see a tree over 3m tall, it was planted. And we heard this Icelandic joke: "If you are lost in a forest in Iceland, don't forget to stand up."
- OldSchoolJohnny 9y agoJesus, I read that and realized no one there understands how forest succession works. You can't go from nothing to giant trees, there's a whole host of stages in between.
- partycoder 9y agoOnce the trees are removed, erosion happens, followed by lost of topsoil. Topsoil is an ecosystem in its own, with microorganisms and small animals. Just replanting a tree will not regenerate that. Agriculture faces a similar problem. Then, forests are much more than just trees. There are all sort of plants, insects, fungi, etc.
- EddieSpeaks 9y agoHave they tried something like this (adapting to the weather of course) https://www.ted.com/talks/shubhendu_sharma_how_to_grow_a_forest_in_your_backyard https://www.ted.com/talks/shubhendu_sharma_how_to_grow_a_for...
- SeanDav 9y agoOT: Now that is an example of an article's photos done right! Not at all intrusive, like those horrible scrolling photos that are so popular on various sites and some great effects of zooming and pull-back, plus a convenient slide-show (With Captions) by clicking on a photo - Well Done NYT! ...and here is an example of how not to do it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/sold_for_a_song http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/sold_for_a_song
- vitro 9y agoI've seen a write up of a test where tons of orange peels have been dumped and spread over big area [1]. After 16 years, ecologists returned only to find abundant flora at the areas covered with peels. Maybe to try this approach? [1] http://www.upworthy.com/a-juice-company-dumped-orange-peels-in-a-national-park-heres-what-it-looks-like-now http://www.upworthy.com/a-juice-company-dumped-orange-peels-...
- mark-r 9y agoGreat idea! Only problem is the need for large quantities of bio-waste that can be economically transported to the site. This also seems like a zero-sum problem, since the soil where the orange peels were grown is probably declining in proportion to the gains it produced elsewhere.
- vitro 9y agoOf course, it makes sense only if peels or another organic material would rot in some dump area where it rots without any benefit.
- b1gnasty 9y agoI spent years working in the forestry industry in Canada planting trees. The first picture says a lot in respect to why the process might be going slowly for them. It is an athletic endeavour that takes efficient tools and the mindset to endure a lot of suffering. It says they are planting 3 million trees a year; that is a tiny amount. I've worked with many planters who have planted over a million trees themselves. Here's a link to a picture of what an effective treeplanter looks like: https://i0.wp.com/hardcoretreeplanters.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/www-replant-ca_2015_alberta_011.jpg?resize=700%2C467 https://i0.wp.com/hardcoretreeplanters.com/wp/wp-content/upl...
- gardarh 9y agoI spent two summers planting for the Icelandic forrest service and I imagine that is more or less how I and my coworkers looked like (well, somewhat less feminine I suppose). You shouldn't extrapolate too much from the newspaper picture.
- avar 9y agoI worked (among other things) in tree planting as a teenager in Iceland. We weren't doing it very efficiently, but one reason we didn't have these huge bags is because generally your crew is planting this on land that has no existing trees, so you can just drive a pick-up truck alongside the crew. Which looking at this Canadian video of the forestry service might explain the difference, i.e. if you're planting in an existing forest it makes more sense to carry everything with you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkjeC1rxRt0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkjeC1rxRt0
- CanSpice 9y agoIf you haven't read it already, you may be interested in Eating Dirt, a book about planting trees in BC: http://charlottegill.com/?page_id=10 http://charlottegill.com/?page_id=10
- b1gnasty 9y agoYep, I have read it and I have lived that life. A fairly accurate portrayal. I have many, many stories from those years that will be fun to entertain the grandkids with.
- EGreg 9y agoIf more countries took reforestation seriously, then maybe our carbon footprint would diminish. And also, we should put this much effort into combating desertification. Make vertical farms instead of chopping trees down and wringing every last bit out of the soil.
- chimen 9y agoIn Romania we're losing 150 acres/day (or 60 ha) to illegal cutting done by some german and austrian corporations. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/21/holzindustrie-schweighofer-austrian-timber-firm-accused-of-illegal-logging https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/21/holzindu...
- farseer 9y agoI think regrowing forests in Romania would be an easier task than Iceland, nevertheless its worth preserving what you have.
- setsquared 9y agoThis will be an interesting experement and I wonder what wildlife it will bring back and any damage it will reverse
- Myrmornis 9y agoIt's strange to me that tourists and the film industry find the landscape beautiful because of its lack of trees.
- xhedley 9y agoI took a holiday trip to Norway recently and parts looked like Scotland ... but with trees. I was told this was due to Norwegians no longer keeping goats since the 1950s. The before and after landscape photographs are striking. http://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/blog/reforestation-in-norway-showing-what%E2%80%99s-possible-in-scotland-and-beyond http://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/blog/reforestation-in-nor...
- SiempreZeus 9y agoWhat drives me crazy is how they make 3 million trees sound like a lot. I am a Forester and we typically plant over 600 trees per acre so 3 million is only about 5,000 acres. Which is not a particularly large forest. Hell I have 5 times that in a moderately size metropolitan area. A decent crew of 5 people can plant that in a few months. I'm sure their prices are extremely high but we pay less than 10 cents a seedling and that is for high end seedlings. Planting doesn't cost much more than that either. Once again I am sure it is different in a place that doesn't have a forestry industry, but if it is a national priority they could make it happen.
- therealdrag0 9y ago> They are now grown as saplings at greenhouses in Iceland, because importing live trees is prohibited. I wonder why they can't import live trees and if they could accelerate the process if they could.
- Companion 9y agoGood for them, I think this is a great way to help the fight against climate change and regenerate their ecosystem. Who doesn’t like trees?
- Pica_soO 9y agoI guess planting poisonous bushes to protect tree seedlings is out of the question?