A Tree A Day Could Help Keep Climate Change At Bay [Video]

On a Saturday afternoon in the Fairlane neighborhood of Kansas City, Kate Fowler positions the base of a young American elm tree in her lap in front of a crowd of volunteers.

Shovels in hand, the volunteers listen attentively to instructions on how to ready the roots of trees they’ll soon be planting all along the block.

Fowler and her group of volunteers are with the Heartland Tree Alliance (HTA), a program with the environmental nonprofit Bridging the Gap. Over time, HTA hopes to expand the metropolitan area’s total tree count, otherwise known as the urban tree canopy. On this particular day, however, they’re just trying to recover some lost ground.

“This neighborhood had over 40 ash trees removed just this month.” says Fowler.

According to Fowler, the devastation of ash trees in this neighborhood was due to the emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle that has been nesting in and destroying a devastating number of these kinds of trees across the …