Why do I no longer get a photo of every UK tree I fund?

Katie Pownall

Katie Pownall

Over the last three and a half years, Ecologi’s trusted UK reforestation partners – Protect Earth (PE), The Future Forest Company (FFC), and the International Tree Foundation (ITF) – have planted over 325,000 trees across the British Isles on behalf of our community. To date, every single one of these trees has been allocated to our members’ Ecologi profiles with a photo of the tree, its species, and its what3words location. While this level of detail about each tree was feasible when we were funding small numbers of trees, demand for UK trees from our community has now grown to such an extent that the task of collecting all this data has become a burden on our reforestation partners. It is limiting their ability to have the biggest possible positive impact on the climate and biodiversity crises as possible.

A change needed to happen to make sure our UK reforestation partners could continue to use their resources as effectively as possible for the good of our planet. After discussing this issue with our partners over the last year or so, we have now made the decision to remove the individual tree photos and data from our UK trees. 

In order to maintain transparency about the UK trees our customers are funding, we are going to provide more detailed information about each UK tree planting project we’re funding, and each UK tree in our customers’ profiles will have a link to the relevant project page.

Why is photographing individual trees no longer feasible?

There are several reasons why taking a photo of each individual tree is putting undue strain on our UK reforestation partners:

  • The practical challenges of photographing each tree is limiting our impact

PE: “When we started out planting a few hundred trees on unused corners of farms, it was easy enough to photograph the trees as we went, but as we’ve scaled to planting thousands of trees at a time it has become entirely unmanageable. Increasingly we try to avoid planting in rigid grids [to better mimic natural woodland development], and this makes taking photographs afterwards incredibly complicated. This was adding days of work to the team’s plate – days that could be spent planning, prepping, or planting other sites.”

ITF: “Over the past couple of years we have experimented with a rigorous protocol of recording a photo and location of every tree. This has given us a granular account of each project and a very detailed set of data to work with. Every tree has been visited and survival rates have been calculated exactly. However, not all projects are suitable for such rigorous monitoring (such as those on very steep slopes or rough ground), and [the requirement to photograph each individual tree] had the potential to affect the choice of projects that we were supporting. We’d like to be able to support the projects that we think are best, regardless of the difficulty of terrain or the costs of monitoring.”

An example of some of the more rugged terrain where UK trees are planted that makes it difficult to gather individual photos once planting is complete. This is one of the projects Protect Earth has worked on recently at Hardknott Forest in Cumbria.

 

  • Recruiting qualified people is challenging

FFC: “To obtain the photographs, we must employ a trained forester who can identify each tree species to go out in all weathers and challenging terrains, to photograph every single tree planted. It is a challenge to recruit for this role as not many foresters will undertake this type of work.”

ITF: “The costs and time needed for trained individuals to undertake this work was itself very prohibitive, and restricted our planting ambitions.”

  • Resources are better spent in other areas

FFC: ”Creating a unique photograph of each tree that we plant is limiting the level of impact that we can have. It takes a large amount of work for our team and is operationally challenging. Images need to be quality-checked by our team and then sent out, a time-consuming process for team members who could be working on more impactful projects. The tree photography process is expensive to facilitate and, in line with our ethos to work as impactfully and sustainably as possible, we want to channel our resources directly into our reforestation and environmental restoration projects.”

  • Growing numbers of photos have a growing carbon footprint

Storing large files, which the individual tree photos tend to be, requires energy which is often not derived from renewable sources. The more files we need to store, the larger the carbon footprint the photos are generating. 

FFC: “From a sustainability perspective we need to consider that thousands of tree images mean large amounts of data being stored.”

What will removing individual photos allow our partners to do?

Every minute and every penny that no longer has to be spent on taking thousands of individual photos and sharing them with us can now be directed towards activities that will bring greater positive benefits for our planet. This includes undertaking more surveys and monitoring, engaging with local communities, and planting more trees!

FFC: “We have now planted our 1 millionth tree, but photographing every sapling was holding us back from maximising our impact. Now, we can push forward with our mission to ensure that our work is as impactful on the climate and nature crisis as possible.”

Oak seedlings growing on FFC’s Dumyat site near Stirling

How will we maintain transparency about UK tree planting?

We hope that removing individual tree photos will actually give Ecologi’s supporters more transparency about UK projects we support. Going forward, each UK project will have its own project page, just as the international projects we support do. There, we’ll be posting updates from the projects, with survival rates, photos to show how the trees are doing, and maps of the sites to show exactly where your money is making a difference.

All our UK partners will continue their excellent monitoring work to ensure the trees we fund are given the best possible chance of survival, and have the biggest possible positive impact on the local environment.

ITF: “We have developed a monitoring protocol based around sample plots. This will see us monitor very closely the progress of randomly assigned areas of the planting sites, giving us a representative picture of the progress of the project as a whole. These techniques are used across the world in many sectors of fieldwork, and we see this as ample evidence for the progress of our projects. If done correctly, this would alleviate resources (in personnel and finances) that could then be funnelled back into our tree planting work.”

PE: “We’ll keep taking photos of the sites in general, and our drone is in the shop getting fixed up ready for spring/summer site visits to show how progress is coming along. In a few years more of our trees will be big enough to be seen “from space”, with satellite tracking projects like Restor showing we are doing what we say we are. If you have any doubt we’re doing the work, come along to one of our events and see for yourself!”

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