Portland, OR. The regular NBA season doesn’t end until April 10th, but the Trail Blazers have already hit enough three-point shots to earn over 14,000 trees to plant. The Blazers are teaming again with Daimler Trucks North America and Friends of Trees to plant three trees for every three point field goal made during the 2018-19 regular season. Last season, the “3’s for Trees” program helped plant over 15,000 trees. (Photo credit, Justin Tucker)
Christa Stout, Vice President of Social Responsibility for the Portland Trail Blazers explains, “Planting over 15,000 trees is an incredible milestone, and it has been amazing to see the transformation of the Sandy River Delta over the past four seasons. We are proud to partner with these two amazing organizations that continue to make a positive impact on our environment.”
Scott Fogarty, Executive Director of Friends of Trees; Eileen Frack, Daimler’s General Manager of Human Resources; and Christa Stout celebrated the program at the Blazers 2018-19 season opener.
Trail Blazers and Daimler volunteers helped plant the “3’s for Trees” saplings last spring.
Daimler Trucks North America helped Friends of Trees plant the 15,000th tree in the Sandy River Delta. Thanks to the reforestation of this area, native wildlife has returned to the Delta to live and breed for the first time in many years. After the regular season, volunteers will be out planting again. You can join a Friends of Trees planting event to help plant all these trees. Learn more at friendsoftrees.org.
From Friends of Trees:
Friends of Trees was founded in 1989 by a community member who loved trees and started planting them in Portland neighborhoods. Today, Friends of Trees is a nationally recognized, regional leader in improving the urban tree canopy and restoring sensitive natural areas—through programs delivered by thousands of volunteers. Friends of Trees greens our region while growing community.
Since our founding Friends of Trees has planted 750,000+ trees and native plants with thousands and thousands and thousands of volunteers in 120+ neighborhoods in six counties across two states.
Whether it’s a forest created from our canopy of urban trees or the forest to come from our restoration plantings in sensitive natural areas, there is no doubt that the trees planted by Friends of Trees play a vital role our region’s livability. Given rising temperatures and all that we know about the cooling and cleansing effects of trees, it’s easy to see how our work improves our natural environment. But what’s really something else is the people-power: the trees we plant are actually planted by 6,000+ volunteers every planting season.
