Pushing Ahead Despite the Pandemic: Forests Ontario’s Year in Review

By Augusta Lipscombe

As 2020 draws to a close, we can’t help but reflect on our achievements. As in every sector, Covid-19 upended all our processes. Still, Forests Ontario continued to plant trees, deliver forest education, and engage with our community. We are proud of our resilience.

Tree Planting & Restoration

Despite the pandemic, Forests Ontario significantly increased canopy cover in 2020, facilitating the planting of two million trees across the province and country. We even helped restore nearly 10 acres of burnt forest in northern California’s Klamath National Park. In total, since 2008 Forests Ontario has planted 34 million trees.

We believe in a landscape approach to support a healthy environment. Thus, we worked to create, maintain, and enhance nearly 200 hectares of grasslands through our division Grasslands Ontario.

We will carry this momentum forward into the next year and beyond, as Canada commits to plant two billion trees over the next ten years and as the world heads into the United Nations’
Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

Forest Education

It is vital to engage and enhance the environmental education of our future stewards. Fostering youth today is foundational in ensuring healthy landscapes tomorrow.

This year, we worked to create new education materials (and adapt existing ones) for online and COVID-safe learning, bringing students and teachers the accessible and engaging environmental education programming they need. We reached more than 2,000 students and educators through Ontario Envirothon, Forestry in the Classroom, and Tree Bee.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry’s Sustainable Growth: Ontario’s Forest Sector Strategy recognized our dedication to quality forest education: “Our youth are Ontario’s future and we are increasingly becoming an urban province, so to support students’ understanding of Ontario’s forests and the role of the forest sector, Forests Ontario has produced a series of educational tools including lesson plans and immersive educational experiences like Forestry in the Classroom and Forestry Connects.”

Community Engagement

We focus community engagement and awareness efforts on telling the story of our forests and the role they play in fostering healthy and prosperous communities. Our Annual Conference, We The Forest, brought together more than 400 forestry professionals, landowners, Indigenous leaders, educators, and students to collaborate for our forests’
future. Through our #ItTakesAForest initiative, we established billboards and reached audiences with messages of forestry awareness in four new communities in northern Ontario. We also celebrated our 10th year at the Toronto Distillery District’s Winter Village, offering safe Christmas tree pickups and sourcing the District’s iconic evergreen centerpiece.

We also in 2020 launched our Reconciliation Community Tree Plant (RCTP) program, funded through TD Bank Group. Through RCTPs, we engage with Indigenous communities and organizations to plan and hold planting events, each with its own unique vision, format, and contributions to the broader goal of reconciliation. This fall, we worked with several First Nations communities and other partners to hold two successful Ontario planting events, creating ‘The Healing Place’ in Shanly and a multi-generational forest stand in Ohsweken. We look forward to more Reconciliation Community Tree Plants in 2021.

The support of our members, partners, and sponsors made these achievements possible. Thank you, all!

Our 2021 New Year’s Resolution? We will keep striving towards a future where healthy forests sustain healthy communities, and continue being the voice of our forests.