61 Trees per person - Thanks Nigel.

I came across this site today http://www.nigelsecostore.com/acatalog/Meet_Nigel.html and encountered an entry on Nigel's blog.

NASA satellites made possible for Nalini Nadkarni at Evergreen State College in Washington to estimate the number of trees on planet earth. Because they reflect sunshine in particular patterns, it’s possible for biologists to determine coverage and look at numbers. The result? There are approximately 400,246,300,201 trees in the world.

But what does that mean? Well, using the latest estimates for our human population, Nadkarni calculated we ‘have‘ roughly 61 trees each. Is that adequate? Hard to say. How many trees do we each ‘use‘ in our lifetime? Just consider your dependence on paper, construction materials, firewood, magazines, and so on.

Now keep in mind trees are pretty important. They soak up excess carbon we emit and provide habitat for much of the world’s biodiversity. Seventy percent of the Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests and The World Resources Institute reports that over 80 percent of these areas have already been destroyed.

That said, the good thing about this story is that trees are a renewable resource. So let’s make sure we continue planting them and do a better job of preserving the forests we have.

I am hoping to buy some land by the end of this year and plant 305 trees on it. Probably in my homeland New Zealand as land is a little more affordable than here in the North West of England.

Will update the success of this project later in the year.