Benefits of Trees

• Not all benefits derived from trees are obvious. For example, trees help reduce noise pollution. According to the website Scenic America, "belts of trees 100 feet wide and 45 feet long can cut highway noise in half." In terms of benefiting the oxygen supply, 25,000 forested acres offset the emissions of 10 billion cars. A single tree produces 75 percent of a person's oxygen supply, and one fully mature tree can absorb up to 240 pounds of small air-borne pollutants and gases each year. City neighborhoods with trees can experience consistently cooler temperatures of up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit compared to treeless neighborhoods in the same city.
  
  

Main Threats

• According to the Morton Arboretum, a full 10 percent---or more than 8,700 species---of the world's trees are "threatened with extinction" and another 1,000 tree species are "critically endangered." Globally, the two biggest threats against trees are commercial logging and climate change. In 1998, three large conservation organizations---Botanic Gardens Conservation International, Fauna & Flora International and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre---started the Global Trees Campaign to save threatened and endangered species. The campaign provides information to communities, supports the sustainable use of trees and takes action to conserve trees and forests.
  
  

Endangered Trees

• The Global Trees Campaign keeps a list and individual profiles of the world's threatened and endangered trees. Many trees, such as the big-leaf mahogany, are on the list due to over-harvesting. Others---such as the dragon tree---are on the list because of their dependence on birds or animals that are nearly extinct to germinate and therefore reproduce. The magnolia tree is endangered because it's been experiencing low fruiting and low regeneration for reasons that are unclear to conservationists. In the United States, a third of all maple tree species are endangered, as are almost a third of all wild oak tree species.
  
  

Protection Efforts

• There are several strategies that individuals, communities and governmental bodies are using in order to protect trees, forests and wooded areas. In more extreme cases, organizations or governments have purchased land to conserve the trees found there. Incentives such as property tax breaks for landowners who conserve individual trees or wooded lots have been successful, as has establishing community-provided funds aimed at planting new trees and replacing those lost to storms and disease. Community education is a primary protection effort because landowners who understand the benefits of their trees are more likely to take care of them.
  
  

Individual Action

• Individuals have the opportunity to positively impact tree conservation efforts by purchasing wood and wood products from sustainable resources only, recycling or reusing all paper and wood, and planting trees. According to the Morton Arboretum, the "average tree returns $2.70 in benefits for every $1 of community investment." Learning to care for established trees is key to conservation efforts as well, since they remove up to 70 times more pollution from the air than do smaller trees.