So, as we come down to the end of the semester, our team has learned a lot from our EACAP project as well as our research project. For our research project, our team did deforestation since we felt that it would go really well/connect with our EACAP project, which was planting trees for the Citizens Climate. For deforestation, our team found that deforestation has been a very big concern for the environment and has been in the news for a good amount of time, especially what has happened at the Amazon Rainforest. The 2 biggest facts that our group found about deforestation was that forests cover a big part of our planet and those trees provide food, water, and air for everyone, including animals, where almost 80% of animals live in forests. Another fact was that some 13.2 million people across the world have a job in the forest sector and another 41 million have a job that is related to the sector. Seeing these 2 facts, it made us think that if these trees keep getting cut down for different uses to where they aren’t replanted, everyone, including animals, will be affected and have loss of habitats and many other things too. So, our biggest thing that we got out of this that we would hope everyone does is that if you cut a tree down, plant another tree as well as go paperless to help preserve a tree from getting cut down.
For our EACAP project, our team worked with the Citizens Climate Lobby Reading Berks-Chapter to help plant trees for different homeowners in Reading. We planted two different trees, one was the Amelanchier ‘Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry’ and the other one was the Cercis ‘Eastern Redbud’. Going into it, we kind of had an idea of what it would be like and planting a tree did not seem too bad, but after we planted all the trees, we saw that there is a lot more to planting a tree than the simple steps of digging a hole and planting that tree. Trees are very important, especially native trees, to the environment because they help with climate change, help with wildlife, etc. After the project was over, this was a great experience and it allowed us to really understand why planting trees are so important and why they shouldn’t be cut down. Our thoughts on this whole project and what we gained from it are that this is a great experience for anyone that really loves the environment or anyone really that wants to get out and do something for it that really makes you contribute to helping the environment. The environment has been a big concern in the news and doing something for it to help it is what everyone should be doing now and this project really shows that and contributes to doing that. What our message would be to other individuals is to be active in helping out the environment because many animals depend on the environment and keeping it safe is what everyone should be doing. Just by doing something little for the environment will make you a contributor to helping keep the environment safe so that is what our message would be. Once again, this has been a great experience for us and hope that more people start doing more for the environment to keep it safe.
