Are there more trees in Indiana than there were a decade ago?

Are there extra bushes or acres of forest in Indiana than there have been a decade in the past? A listener in Elkhart wished to know.

Not a lot has modified previously decade — however the reply remains to be a bit of shocking. In keeping with the U.S. Forest Service, from 2006 to 2019 the variety of forest acres in Indiana went up barely by 2 p.c. However the variety of particular person bushes went down by 6 p.c.

John Seifert directs the Indiana Division of Pure Sources’ division of forestry. He mentioned the reason being that Indiana’s forests are growing old.

“And as bushes get greater, they shade out different bushes, it is simply kind of the survival of the strongest, so to talk,” Seifert mentioned.

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In 2020, Gov. Eric Holcomb introduced an initiative to plant 1 million bushes in Indiana by 2025. The Central Indiana Land Belief plans to match that, however over an extended time-frame.

Collectively they’ve planted about 445,000 bushes thus far. Seifert mentioned the DNR expects to plant one other 220,000 by the top of this spring.

However Seifert mentioned these initiatives pale compared to how a lot personal landowners plant — who personal a lot of the forest land within the state. The DNR’s nursery sells about 3 million bushes to the general public annually.

“So our half is only a small piece of what is really been occurring within the state of Indiana, very silently by the personal sector. And a whole lot of that is pushed by farm packages, you realize, the federal authorities’s placing tree planting initiatives,” Seifert mentioned.

Contact reporter Rebecca at rthiele@iu.edu or observe her on Twitter at @beckythiele.

Indiana environmental reporting is supported by the Environmental Resilience Institute, an Indiana College Grand Problem mission growing Indiana-specific projections and knowledgeable responses to issues of environmental change.