Liverpool volunteers and environmentalist groups have helped to plant 600 trees in an event tackling climate change.
Members of the public were invited to Croxteth Hall Park to do their part in The Big Climate Fightback campaign on Saturday. The Woodland Trust is a national UK conservation charity and partnered up with multiple groups for numerous events up and down the country.
The Mersey Forest was one of the key groups involved in bringing the movement to Liverpool. They describe themselves as a “growing network of woodlands and green spaces across Cheshire and Merseyside, which has been creating ‘woodlands on your doorstep’ for 25 years”.
Clare Olver is the Project Development Officer at The Mersey Forest and was one of team helping public volunteers get their hands dirty.
She told JMU Journalism: “We have been absolutely inundated with requests for tree planting, we put it out on Twitter and within about 12 hours we had over 200 sign-ups and had to close it. We’ve only got so many spades and we wanted people to have a really good time.”
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She added: “It’s about enjoying and understanding the reasons why we’re planting trees, rather than just coming in and planting thousands and thousands of them, we want to help people understand.”
The Mersey Forest held Saturday’s tree planting in partnership with the Woodland Trust, the Croxteth Park Volunteer Group and Liverpool Council. The chair of the Croxteth Park Volunteer Group, Chris Beyga, told JMU Journalism: “We do lots of work with Mersey Forest and the local schools to get the kids out here engaged with nature, rather than sitting on an iPad, digging a tree instead.”
The 60-year-old from Croxteth added: “It’s absolutely amazing to see the kids enjoying themselves out and about in the sunshine, not sat about in front of the telly and hopefully that will engage them in future projects that we do as well.
“What we find is nice, is when we plant trees the kids come back to visit them to check they’re okay, some of them put their names on them, it’s really lovely.”