Celebrating 40 Years
and
Our One Billionth Tree

Thank you for the trees you have planted with us and thank you for your support of your fellow planters. Without your self-motivation and cooperation we would not have planted a billion trees.

On Tuesday, November 09, 2010 we held two events to celebrate your contribution:
1. A ceremonial planting of the billionth tree at Prospect Point in Stanley Park and lunch at Prospect Point Restaurant.
2. In the evening, a dance acknowledging planters with music videos at the Heritage Hall (at the corner of 15th Avenue & Main St. in Vancouver).

Speakers at these two events, included Cofounders Dirk Brinkman and Joyce Murray MP, BC's Minister of Forests Pat Bell, Vancouver Councillor Susan Anton, Former Minister of Environment David Anderson, and others.

We now enter our 'Billennium' by thanking you, your unique silvi-'culture' community, and your personal 'Planting the Planet' heroism.

What follows are only a few of the reasons for which we thank you.

Are you ever dedicated and self-motivated! Planting trees in forest slash, up steep slopes, through storm, heat, sleet and snow, in rocky, muddy, deep duff, packing large loads of heavy trees, and always planting to exacting species micro-site standards and spacing despite post-harvest chaos and complex topologies is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. Without your work we could never have planted a billion trees. Treeplanting hardship makes your level of dedication and self-motivation unique! It also means you can do just about anything. Congratulations!

You are an athlete! Your dedication drives you to consume over 3700 calories a day and lose weight during the season. Your fellow planters have been measured utilizing between 50% and 90% of their aerobic (lung/heart) capacity. This aerobic utilization is equivalent to the energy utilized by the long distance Olympic Runners in the four hour 42 kilometer race, except you put out that level of energy eight hours a day, day after day and many of you have done it season after season. Together we innovated the 4:1 shift system (now the 3:1 shift), and adapted many other sport management practices because: You are an Olympic Athlete!

You are a champion! Tuesday evening we will acknowledge some of you who have planted over one million trees. Some like Rick Coutts will plant his 3 millionth tree in 2011. Others like Rebecca Barker became a million tree planter in 2010. No you are not all million tree planters, but you are always champions. Some of you are Cooks who get up at 3AM every morning, or Tree Runners who work all night to open access, or Drivers who get through the impossible safely, or Supervisors who organize to keep spirits high, but all of you have supported each other and been champions for each other during difficult times. We know how deeply you have bonded and supported each other through many tough times. Yes, you are truly a champion.

You are a forest-maker! Did you know the trees you plant are becoming successful forests? Today all harvest disturbances are being reforested promptly. In 2004, when BC's independent Forest Practices Board reviewed the success of BC's Reforestation Regulation, it found fully 97.5% of all areas harvested were on track to be fully stocked with free growing trees by the target year (8 – 20 years), and that each of these areas were stocked with an appropriate species mix for the local ecosystem subzones of each area. You are a very effective reforester. You are a forest-maker!

You are a forest protector! Your success restoring natural forest health also increases rainfall, attenuates peak run-off preventing erosion and modulating the weather. BC's Forest Practices Branch finds artificially reforested growth is 30% higher than naturally regenerated areas. Improved forest health results in better adaptation to the temperature and moisture pattern fluctuations from climate change. because you do such a great job: You are a forest-protector!

You are a weather-maker! Trees pump water into the atmosphere and attenuate peak rainfall by absorbing the rain, and transpiring it later in the season, shortening summer droughts and sustaining riverine systems year round. Because your planted forests sustain the weather systems, wildlife, wilderness communities and farmers can thrive. I bet on a buggy day in June heat you forget you are a remarkable weather-maker. You are!

You are a climate protector! Your planted trees shorten the post disturbance regeneration time and improve forest health and growth. This gives your trees planted the climate benefit of an enhancing the forest ecosystem carbon reservoir. Compared to the log and leave for natural regeneration-- the practice before the development of our silviculture industry—our billion trees planted have removed fifty million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That CO2 is sequestered in the improved growth and healthier forests. Of course this is a nominal number and not creditable because your success has made the reforestation of harvest areas 'business as usual' in British Columbia and most of Canada. You are a climate-protector!

Together you are one of the world's most inspiring climate protectors! Fifty million tonnes is as remarkable a number to think about as a billion trees. Name another collaboration of government, industry and private environmental entrepreneurs like you that has removed that much atmospheric CO2. by planting a billion trees together you inspire reforesting the devastation of the BC's Pine Bark Beetle! Without you the world may have been be too stunned by this catastrophic epidemic to do more than hope something worthwhile grows back. Your contribution to the Brinkman billion tree success inspires practical plans for even greater climate benefits from the next billion you will collectively plant. You are an inspiring climate protector!

Some of you are forest and soil analysts and scientists! You are part of a collective intelligence and understanding of forest renewal and growth that is the product of working together for decades in all kind of conditions and ecosystems. From this collective experience some of you have emerged to become leaders in the new science of practically measuring forest climate, water and other benefits. Some of you continue to work in the field, some are now working with Brinkman's Earth Systems analysts on forest climate projects and have pioneered some of the world's highest forest carbon standards (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's standards, the Voluntary Carbon Standard, Carbon Fix, California's standard and the N.A. Forest Carbon Standard). Your first billion trees planted were mostly for timber benefits. Together we can help finance a significant component of the next billion trees we plant from calculating the climate, water, soil and other ecosystem benefits. Yes you are a scientist!

You are a public advocate! The tradition of public-good advocacy goes back to the company in the early seventies. Dirk, Ted Davis and Joyce Murray worked with many of you in the Pacific Reforestation Workers Association on planter health and public policy issues— a time when you tried to keep contractors and workers working together. Thanks to your continuing support, during the eighties and nineties, as president of the Western Silviculture Contractors Association Dirk was able to lobby successfully for the Reforestation Regulation, passed in BC in 1987. Through the Canadian Silviculture Association over the last 25 years Dirk worked on the National Forest Strategy and today, John Lawrence, Brinkman's Chief Operating Officer, continues that work as president of the WSCA. In 2001 this became a career for Joyce Murray when she was made the Minister of Water, Land and Air Protection (What better title for one of us! ) She is now a Member of Parliament in Ottawa. Thank you for your public advocacy support!

You are a community volunteer! Your long history of pro bono work for the public good is not only planting the largest number of trees in North America. You are a seasonal worker who returns to your homes and becomes a community activist on innumerable sustainability fronts. You have contributed so actively to public discourse, and so substantively to policy solutions to local, provincial, national and international sustainability challenges, that collectively you form one of the largest environmental entrepreneurial volunteer groups in the Canada. You are all willing volunteers who have created a tradition of pro-bono service work. Dirk accepted both the National Forestry Achievement Award from CIF (1998) and the Honorary Forester recognition by the BCRPFs (2002), on behalf of all your many contributions and support. You are a most incredible volunteer!

You are an innovator! From individual planting challenges to practical solutions developing planting crew protocols to optimize personal productivity while working cooperatively, your innovations in planting practices, reforestation techniques, new tools, technology and equipment are what has made Brinkman enough of a leader to plant a billion trees. From back in the seventies when you were first to plant mixed species and first to work out the concepts of micro-site planting through to the high standards you set for quality which often became the benchmark for the industry, you have been innovators. Look at the innovations in your remote on-site camp standards and practices, the clean drinking water processing in the eighties—sure there were challenges, but the systems developed then are on all of the world's jet planes now, so they can land in the developing countries and take on and clean poor quality water. Your technical improvements and innovative silviculture equipment have become the standards in the industry, like the planting spade first designed and cast in 1983 now modified almost daily by some of you to fit each site on the ubiquitous grinder; your seedling transport solutions like the Fiberglass Insulated Seedling Transporter (1992) developed with FERRIC all still the standard today. You are a remarkable innovator!

You are a cooperative entrepreneur! Many of you have shared your good will towards the First Nations in whose traditional territories we work. Eventually your good will permitted us to innovated strong practical partnership relationships with First Nations. Many of you are First Nation. On Tuesday some of your successes may be acknowledged by the Chief of the Lax Kw' alaams, Garry Reece. Later this month his people's Limited Partnership, Coast Tsimshian Resources, which your team has been privileged to support, is being awarded the Community Owned Business of the Year award by the Premier. You are cooperative entrepreneurs who know how to partner and to serve!

You are a successful exporter! You exported your very unique British Columbia/Canadian reforestation expertise. You work with Brinkman y Asociados Reforestadores Centro America (BARCA) from nursery, through prescription, establishment and tending to final harvest. During your fifteen years commitment to operations in Panama and Costa Rica BARCA has been entrusted with over $100 million in forest investments. You have become nearly as numerous in Panama and Costa Rica as in Canada. Chief Betanio Chiqidama of the Embera-Wounaan of Panama, BARCA's indigenous partner in the Darien, and the spokesperson for all of the indigenous peoples of Panama will also be there on November 09. You are also successful in many smaller operations in other Central American countries as well as projects on other continents. You are a successful exporter!

You are a sustainability ambassador! Wherever you go when you travel and work globally you champion sustainability, using examples from your practical experience in Canada's natural forest harvesting, prompt reforestation and sensitive practices. Your contribution helped create a company of practices that are a model to the world. Yes you are a sustainability ambassador!

You are an ecosystem restorer! Some of you developed into a strong urban ecosystem restoration group who are leaders in both Ontario and BC, In 2008-2010 your colleagues renewed the Sea to Sky highway construction for the Olympics. You have restored intertidal ecosystems, the urban tree canopy of the Greater Toronto Area, highway 401 and 407 and numerous other projects. That is one reason we have chosen Stanley Park for planting the ceremonial billionth tree --to celebrate your ecosystem restoration commitment in a park where you replanted the blowdown, recreated a salmon stream, built marches to filter the causeway hydrocarbons before the water goes into lost lagoon. You are an ecosystem restorer!

You are a protector of life! Reforesting harvest disturbances restores forest ecosystems. Healthy ecosystems are not only the source of the diversity and richness of life today, they are the foundations of human well-being, for without ecosystems people would perish. The pressure of human development on the ecosystems which are also the foundations of human well-being is one of the most difficult challenges of your generation. Your dedication show the rest of the world that it is possible to restore and sustain our ecosystems. Your innovation and entrepreneurship show the world that we can sustain ecosystems while sharing their benefits. This makes you a protector of life!

You remember! I have used many words to talk about all of the good things you have done together with your fellow planters and others. But you do not forget. There are many unsolved challenges, problems that require your solutions. While there are many good things to remember and appreciate about each other you will never forget those who came before us. You will never forget those who lost their lives working with us. Whenever you think about them you will always say 'never again' because you will never forget them. In our wilderness workplace over the past forty years we have lost many close friends: four were very young promising stars, Alan De Jong, Michelle Huizinga, David Morin and recently Benjamin Chamoro; one was a seasoned champion who had planted nearly two million trees, Danan Woytowich; two were super(visor)-heroes who were so capable, careful and experienced their deaths were unthinkable, Krzysztof Koziol and Jabez Kruithof. Jabez is a legend.

No, we will never forget them. Nor will we ever forget the others who have gone before us, who died too young, whether from cancer or other causes; like Rodney Bernier, (Jabez's co-star in our episode Twins), Ted Davis, Johan Kruus, Sean Mabberley, Claas Dummeier, and many more. You came before us as our models of self-motivation and dedication. You came before us as our athletes! champions! forest-makers! forest-protectors! climate makers! innovators! ecosystem restorers! sustainability ambassadors! You came before us. Because we will always remember you, we will all be Protectors of life!

We are protectors of life and it is life that goes on. Your extreme remote wilderness adventures bond you together. Challenges, hardships and collaborative successes cause crews to become remote wilderness tribes. Life-long friendship bonds are created and close relationships create families and children. Some of you are our third generation of tree planters.

Yes, you are incredible. There are no words adequate to congratulate you and thank you. Congratulate yourself! Congratulate each other! As always, it is collectively that we most closely glimpse your numerous, numerous and essential contribution to sustainability.

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

But your job is not done. In fact there has never been a time when you are more needed. Climate change is combining with other human disturbances to threaten biodiversity. The rate of extinctions is 100-1000 times higher than in millions of years. Water soil and air quality must be protected and restored through protecting, restoring and sustainably managing forests. Your commitment has shown that this can be done on the scale that may meet this crisis. So this congratulation and this thank you is also a call to arms, a call to 'arm yourself with a good planting spade'.

But for now, Thank You, Thank You and Thank You again.

Dirk Brinkman, CEO

 

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