Trees In Focus Here For Earth Day

While Earth Day isn’t a widely celebrated day, there has been more focus on trees in the last few years in Valley County. This year on Earth Day the health department will have a community stroll – and there has been discussion about a possible community cleanup day in the future to celebrate the day and promote keeping the community clean.

Free Trees

Valley County has been continuing their free tree day each year for several years. Up to today they’ve distributed 10,000 trees, and an additional 2,000 trees will be distributed this year.

The free tree day will take place on April 29, starting at 7:30 a.m. at the Valley County Courthouse. There will be a limit of five trees per household on a first come, first serve basis. Former county commissioner Dave Pippin said he had been collecting donations from the community each year to continue to support the free tree day. This year the Gumbo Gals Gardener Club donated and will be helping to distribute trees this year.

More than distributing trees, master gardener students will be demonstrating proper planting techniques and the MSU extension ag agents will be available to answer gardening and tree questions. This year the public will have some choice of chokecherry, red osier dogwood, blueleaf honeysuckle, American plum, silver buffaloberry, caragana and common lilac.

What Can You Do?

Local Joan McKeown is fairly passionate about the planet and has high hopes of promoting Earth Day in the future. She explained that this day is to help inspire awareness and an appreciation for the environment. She provided a written later that has been condensed here on what the public can do and why keeping aware and proactive is so important.

“Our Earth is a beautiful, wonderful place and part of an even greater planetary system,” she said. “The most important thing to consider is the air, water and land provide life for all living species. We must be good stewards of this place we call home.”

Suggestions she provided were planting trees, which the free tree day helps provide. Recycling anything you can. In Valley County plastic bags can be recycled at Albertsons, metal and aluminum cans and other metals can be recycled at Pacific Steel and McKeown said to think about donating metal cans to the Milk River Activity Center. She said that people could opt for paper bags instead of plastic at the grocery store. Usable items could be donated instead of discarded. And she highly suggested a community cleanup should be organized in the future.

McKeown has been working on gathering information on trying to advocate a program to recycle newspaper, cardboard and white paper, as the Milk River Activity Center recently had to drop their recycling program.

“Every action that is taken to reduce waste going to the landfill is a step in the right direction,” McKeown said.

Other Events On Earth Day

Valley County Health Department community stroll will take place along the Sullivan Trail from 4:30-6 p.m. While the event is focused on health and movement to stay healthy, Executive Director Connie Boreson said that because it was on Earth Day they thought the walk along the trail is a good way to promote the environment as well.

Students will get to learn about the environment and trees, as this Friday is also Arbor Day. The Valley County Conservation District who works with Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) will be having an open house, where they will also give out free trees on Friday, April 24 starting at 10 a.m. and going until 1 p.m. at the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) building in Glasgow. They'll have refreshments available to the public and plan on giving away around 60 trees. They'll be presenting around 40 free trees to the local schools. This year they'll be giving out Colorado blue spruce trees. The idea is to help promote conservation and make the public aware of conservation efforts locally.