Group Profile: Give your neighborhood some ReLeaf

The population of the Bay Area increases every day and along with it the infrastructure necessary to support our lifestyle. Where fruit orchards and oak forests once stood there are now apartments, houses, malls, streets, and parking lots. The beautiful green landscape is turning to lifeless gray concrete. For every four trees cut down to build houses and roads, only one tree is replanted. Yet trees are vital to life. They provide oxygen and food, regulate our climate and fresh water supplies, and contribute to the green that soothes our eyes and soul. Like all living beings they deserve respect and a place to grow and flourish.

Over the past few years numerous articles have awakened us to the greenhouse effect and the damage done to the biosphere by the decimation of the world’s rainforests. We all want the destruction to stop, but often feel frustrated and incapable of doing something effective. However, the Amazon basin is not the only place where trees are being cut at a dizzying rate. Forests are disappearing fast everywhere. California, the Bay Area, your city and your neighborhood have lost most of their trees in the last hundred years. But...if you love trees and greenery, if you think that cities are more pleasant and human when there are lots of trees and parks around, if you like the coolness, shade, and recreation that trees provide, if you think globally and want to act locally, if you want to help nature and the environment recover from the desolation here and now, there is ReLeaf for you.

The California ReLeaf network is a movement of people working to establish more trees in their neighborhoods and communities. It is a local response to global warming, deforestation and polluted cities. California ReLeaf is sponsored by the Trust for Public Land in San Francisco. Their goal is to plant a new tree for every resident by the year 2000. Planting is done in parks, shopping malls, school yards, on public lands, and along streets. Any place where a tree can grow and prosper.

The Bay Area ReLeaf groups need volunteers to plant and maintain new trees, protect those already existing, grow and propagate seedlings, gather information about the type of trees which will do well in a given area. Volunteers are also needed to encourage businesses and schools to participate and sponsor a ReLeaf project, contribute artwork, call volunteers, help write flyers and reports, design posters and T-shirts, and more. ReLeaf groups also need in-kind donations of materials, access to photocopying and printing facilities, and financial contributions.

Empower yourself and your community by getting involved. Make a difference today which will carry on for years to come. Your greatest reward will be seeing beautiful strong trees grow year after year, and knowing you have given them life.

Contact your nearest ReLeaf group:

Peninsula ReLeaf
P.O. Box 5894, Stanford CA 94309
(415) 325-2786 or 326-SEED

Sunnyvale ReLeaf
728 Dona Ave., Sunnyvale CA 94087
(408) 730-5820

East Bay ReLeaf
(415) 374-3145

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Published in Action vol 1, no 3 · Nov–Dec 1990