Over 500 trees planted in Waterville
Waterville was the sight of a greening initiative this past weekend in partnership with the munici-pality’s environmental committee and the Arbre-évolution Cooperative with over 529 trees and shrubs planted in Water-tower Park, Bellevue Park, and the skate park.
Arbre-évolution oversees tree planting initiatives across the province with a variety of partners in an effort to increase the ecosystem quality of the areas they work in. The main funder of this pro-ject is Calculcarbone.org, a tool developed by Arbre-évolution which allows individuals to offset their CO2 emissions generated by transport.
“The site’s sales have increased considerably over the past two years, and we can sense the enthu-siasm of citizens to do their part. And see what it allows us to accomplish!” Explained Simon Côté, director of Arbre-évolution in a press release.
In full compliance with health standards, the tree-planting event saw an enormous turnout with nearly 70 volunteers who were spread over the different locations during the day including resi-dents of the municipality, municipal councillors, teachers from the Enfants-de-la-terre school, chil-dren and adolescents, as well as Marie-claude Bibeau, Member of Parliament for Compton-stanstead and Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food at the federal level who, according to the press release stated, “I was impressed by the involvement of the citizens of Waterville in reforesting their municipality. Children, adolescents, parents and the elderly - all set to work to improve their environment. Hoping that other municipalities will follow Waterville’s example!”
Project manager, Laurence CôtéLeduc, who holds a master’s degree in public health, was very ex-cited at the local response and stated that the event was very inspiring because, “we get involved with the people, see the smiles on their faces and have our hands in the soil”.
Laurence Côté-leduc pointed out that tree planting in municipal parks is just a fraction of the ser-vices ArbreÉvolution offers. She went on to list, aside from the carbon compensations service, ag-roforestry practices such as creating tree windbreakers for farms, their development of food forests and outdoor classes for schools to promote eco-education.
Funding for the initiative was provided by both the Arbre-évolution and the Coaticook MRC via the Waterways Fund program which sees projects that help protect and develop
the riparian strip along the Coaticook River.
With upcoming events around the Montérégie, Sherbrooke, and Montreal areas, Arbre-évolution is
looking for volunteers for its events. They are active on Facebook and Instagram as well as on their website, www.arbre-evolution.org, which they invite everyone to look into.