Fortunately Men of the Trees in Western Australia are bringing such people together. They see this as a task deliberately set before them. In the spirit of the first Men of the Trees who saved their tribal lands from the blowing winds of the desert, this Society of volunteers in Western Australia is leading the way in supporting farmers to get the land back into safety and into production. This Society of 1200 members, its friends and associates, are currently planting around 600,000 trees a year. Teams of volunteers go out seed collecting most weekends, often travelling hundreds of kilometres into the country.
Seed is dried, catalogued and saved for use.
Two nurseries are in daily use right around the year, each capable of growing 200,000 trees. Other members raise 300-600 seedlings in a season in their own back gardens for designated farmers. The Million Trees Project draws schools together into similar tree-growing partnerships, each school raising and planting out an average of 4,000 trees each year and putting their botanical studies to practical purpose. And all this activity is focused on the planting-out time, a window of opportunity only ten weeks long, when every available volunteer is pressed into service. Like growing any crop there is only one short period when trees may be planted with any expectation of a satisfactory survival rate, and that's during the first half of winter.