Wildfire isn’t just sad for nature lovers, but it’s also a huge problem for the planet. Forests are some of our best carbon sequesters, and over the past five years hundreds of thousands of acres in the U.S. have literally gone up in smoke, pouring carbon back into the atmosphere. The only way to directly reverse the effects is to wait for new trees to take the place of the old ones. Given the greater number and intensity of wildfires that have become the norm due to climate change, coupled with insufficient forest management practices, the forests need help to regenerate.

So corporations are stepping up and expanding their tree-planting budgets to address the problem, but tree-planting after a forest fire is different from traditional reforestation projects. It takes a lot of management, care and infrastructure to plant trees. Without tree planting organizations and money, usually from corporate backers, once-forested areas would turn into blank landscapes dotted with shrubs that have out-competed the trees in the wake of fire.

Business involvement in tree planting has a long history. Arbor Day, launched in the 1870s and declared a national holiday a century later, has sparked countless workplace tree-planting events — and the Arbor Day Foundation has involved many corporate partners over the decades. As wildfires have accelerated in recent years, and as companies seek to meet ever-challenging sustainability goals including net zero carbon, corporate tree planting efforts tend to be done in partnership with large nonprofits and at a large scale.

Read the full article about wildfires and corporate tree planning by  Jesse Klein at GreenBiz.