Snohomish County hopes to plant a million new trees by 2040

A partnership between Snohomish County and a nonprofit comes with an ambitious goal: Planting a million trees.

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The Everett Herald reports the county is teaming up with Forterra for what the partnership is calling the Healthy Forests Project. By 2040, the hope is to plant a million new trees over 2,500 acres of land.

“It’s more than just a tree-planting effort,” Forterra Green Cities Program Director Joanna Nelson de Flores told the Herald. “Our goal is to restore the full function of the forest.”

Over the course of the project, volunteers will host work parties, removing invasive plants like blackberries and ivy, and replacing them with new trees native to the area.

This comes on the heels of a similarly ambitious project along I-5 as part of the Lynnwood light rail extension, spanning an 8.5 mile stretch adjacent to the freeway. While the project will tear out upwards of 5,300 trees, it will also look to plant 20,000-plus new trees to replace them.

Sound Transit and WSDOT are contracted to maintain those newly-planted trees over the course of a 13-year period, a full decade longer than the three-year window that’s generally allotted.

Snohomish’s own tree-planting initiative was announced in tandem with Earth Day on Monday, April 22, with an event at Lake Stickney County Park.

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