Penny Pines Collection Form 2020 (1)
PENNY PINES
a TREEmendous program
This year, the RI Federation of Garden Clubs, Inc. has joined with the National Garden Clubs, Inc. and the U. S. Department of Agriculture to support the Penny Pines program, a program dedicated to sustaining our national and urban forests by raising funds on the local and state level.
What began in California in 1941 as part of a statewide conservation program, Penny Pines has expanded to all 50 states. The conservation effort entails the planting of replacement seedlings that are indigenous to forested areas damaged by insects, fires or natural catastrophes, home to many animals, birds and insects.
In 2018, members of National Garden Clubs, Inc. donated $72,828 to
- S. state and national forests. This amount translates to 1,071 Penny Pines plantations. Each plantation consists of 20 seedlings, which means garden club members helped supply 214,200 trees.
Reforestation also is a way to help fight global warming. A study calculated that over the decades, those new trees could suck up nearly 830 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Trees remove more carbon from the air when they are younger. “This is by far-by thousands of times- the cheapest climate change solution” and the most effective said Thomas Crowther, a climate change ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
We are asking our clubs to support the Penny Pines program by collecting loose change at their meetings. Create a clever container to pass around at your meetings. In the spring, we will ask you to tally up your change and give a check for the amount collected to the RIFGC Treasurer. We will in tern send the money to NGC. Under the conservation agreement, the U.S. Forest Service will do the planting using your donations together with the federal funds.
Please support our efforts to Plant America,
De Feldman-Chairman