In June the club supported the annual Trees for Survival planting with 7 members joining the Glendowie students on their day-long planting experience. A great environmental and educational project of the Youth Committee.
 

Trees for Survival (TfS) is also fundamentally an environmental education programme, which aims to change the attitudes of young students to the natural world in which we live. As the TfS Patron Ruud Kleinpaste says, “we have got just 1 planet – we had better look after it.” For this reasons schools plant in the same area each year expanding it and this also enables them to observe the growth of trees planted in previous years and the overall impact over time.

The cost of the trees grown by schools (and others) in growing units is actually a relatively small cost of the total project. The stock proof long term fencing of a site is the highest cost item and is contributed by the land owner.

In the area north of the Waikato River, TfS is delivered by Auckland Council, who decide which are the “at risk” catchments, and thus where the TfS trees are planted – without reference to the bank balance of the landowner.

Trees for Survival started as a project of the Rotary Club of Pakuranga (District 9920) and like so many successful Rotary initiatives has expanded to become an enterprise in its own right because it has demonstrated its worth. Certainly it is highly valued by the schools that participate.