Scoutrees

The annual Scoutrees campaign runs during April.

The Scoutrees Campaign is Scouting’s commitment to conservation and sustainability of our natural resources.

Each spring since 1972, thousands of Beaver Scouts, Cub Scouts, Scouts, Venturer Scouts and Rover Scouts – who are part of Scouts Canada, have planted trees through the Scoutrees Program. Scoutrees gives all members the opportunity to demonstrate, through action, their concern for the environment. By planting trees, youth learn about the important role trees have in our lives, the critical need for conservation, the huge impact of climate change and how we can do our part to create a better world.Each spring, 16,000 Scouting members plant another 200,000 trees bringing the total number of trees planted since 1972 to over 80 million. Funds raised not only help us to plant trees, but assist with local Scouting. A portion also goes to the Canadian Scout Brotherhood Fund, for international projects.

Some might recall the night of June 23, 2007 when multiple tornadoes ripped through southern and western Manitoba. Among other damage, the winds snapped and uprooted hundreds of trees in Whiteshell Provincial Park – an unprecedented blowdown.

After that event, the Province of Manitoba, concerned about the risks of wildfire and disease caused by the deadfall, encouraged logging of the affected areas, thus making them ready them for, and in need of, replanting. Then – Scouts to the rescue!

Manitoba Scouting has a tradition of holding a Council-wide tree planting event in southeastern Manitoba each spring on the first Saturday of May. In each of 2008 and 2009, these events were held in the Whiteshell at blowdown areas near Betula Lake and along the Pine Point Rapids hiking trail.

However, the idea of logging the deadfall was not without controversy, with some saying that the forest should be left to recover naturally. Eventually, the Province changed course and decided to stop the logging and replanting. And so, that was the end of Scoutrees planting in the Whiteshell! Since that time, Scoutrees plantings in forested areas of southeastern Manitoba have been held in the Sandilands region, either near Beausejour, MB or south and east of Marchand, MB.

67th Winnipeg has participated in plantings on the first Saturday of May since at least 2008 (probably much longer), with three exceptions. In early May 2013, having come through an extended winter (including the third coldest April on record), it was determined that the ground was just too cold for the saplings to survive. No problem, though. The planting day was simply delayed to May 25.

Then came the spring of 2014. Winnipeg had just lived through its coldest winter since 1898. Some might recall that, in that winter and spring, an extraordinary number of underground water pipes froze up in southern Manitoba. One would have thought that the same cold-ground issue would delay the 2014 planting. But, oddly, that was not the case and the 2014 planting proceeded on the first Saturday of May, as usual.

First-Saturday-of-May plantings continued from 2014 to 2019; however the big Manitoba Scoutrees plantings did not happen in 2020 or 2021, due to the pandemic.

The tradition resumed with a planting in the Sandilands area on May 7, 2022!