Ecuador’s 2015 Tree-Planting Day Set a Guinness World Record

On Saturday 16 May 2015, tens of thousands of volunteers across Ecuador spent the day planting trees, and by evening the country had a Guinness World Record. Early government figures, reported by AFP the next day, put the total at 647,250 seedlings of more than 200 species, planted by 44,883 people on over 2,000 hectares. Later counts were higher: the Scout movement, which handled much of the logistics, reports 57,512 participants planting 765,073 trees and plants at 237 sites covering 2,269 hectares.

The record itself was for diversity rather than sheer numbers: the greatest number of plant species planted within an eight-hour window. Here is what happened, why it mattered, and what a single day of planting can and cannot do for a forest.

What happened on the day

The event, known in Spanish as a siembratón (roughly, a "planting marathon"), was organised nationally by the government with help from schools, community groups and the Scouts of Ecuador. Volunteers fanned out to more than 150 locations, spanning the Pacific coast, the high Andes and the lowland Amazon basin. Families, students, government workers and retirees took part, often planting on degraded hillsides near towns and cities.

Volunteers work their way along a dry, eroded slope above a city, setting seedlings into the ground. Steep hillsides like this lose soil quickly when bare, which is why they are a common target for replanting. Photo via Business Insider.

President Rafael Correa announced the result in his weekly address. Guinness adjudicator Carlos Martinez was on hand to confirm it and, speaking to AFP, said: "There is no record in history of similar events involving over 150 species." One volunteer at the Catequilla site, a government employee named Ricardo Quiroga, told reporters he would happily try to beat the record every month.

Guinness formally presented the certificate to the president on 30 July 2015. The gap between the first-day figures and the final tally is normal for events of this size, as reports from hundreds of sites are gathered and checked afterwards.

Why the number of species matters

Planting many species rather than one is the most interesting part of this record. Large tree-planting drives around the world have often relied on a single fast-growing species, sometimes a non-native one such as eucalyptus. Monoculture plantations can store carbon and produce timber, but they support far less wildlife than a natural forest. Some species, eucalyptus included, also draw heavily on soil moisture and can crowd out other plants.

Restoration ecologists generally favour a mix of native species gathered from the local area. A diverse planting is closer to the forest that once stood there, gives birds, insects and mammals more to live on, and is more resilient if one species is hit by disease or drought. Ecuador is a natural place to make that point: it is one of the world's 17 "megadiverse" countries, and Conservation International ranks it first for biodiversity per square kilometre. The mainland alone hosts about 1,600 bird species and more than 16,000 plant species.

Two boys press soil around a seedling on a mountainside while other volunteers work behind them. Getting young people involved was a deliberate part of the national campaign. Photo via ThinkProgress.

Ecuador's wider push to protect forests

The 2015 planting day did not come out of nowhere. Ecuador's 2008 constitution was the first in the world to give nature legally enforceable rights, the so-called Rights of Nature. The same year the government launched Socio Bosque, a programme that pays landowners and Indigenous and farming communities to keep their land as native forest or grassland. According to Wikipedia's summary of national data, it protects around 2.3% of the country's land area.

At the time of the record, Ecuador's environment ministry said deforestation had fallen to less than half of its historical rate since 2008, and the country had set itself the goal of restoring more land than it lost. That figure comes from the government itself and should be read in that light, but the direction was widely noted. Pressures remain strong, however: oil extraction in the Amazon has caused serious pollution, mining and farming continue to clear land, and Ecuador's glaciers have lost more than half their surface area over four decades.

An older volunteer firms the earth around a freshly planted sapling high in the Andes. Volunteers ranged from small children to retirees. Photo via Phys.org.

How planting trees helps the climate

Trees take carbon dioxide from the air as they grow and lock the carbon into wood, roots and soil. That is why reforestation is often described as one of two broad tools against climate change, alongside cutting emissions in the first place. Healthy forests also hold soil on slopes, slow floodwater, filter water supplies and give wildlife places to live.

The climate benefit takes time, though. A new planting needs decades before it stores anything like the carbon of a mature tropical forest, and that carbon can be released again by fire, pests or logging. For that reason, many scientists stress that protecting existing forests usually does more for the climate than planting new ones. Planting and protection work best together.

The real test: do the trees survive?

A planting day makes headlines; survival rates rarely do. Mass planting campaigns around the world have a mixed record, and in poorly managed projects a large share of seedlings can die within a few years. Some large plantation drives in India, for example, have reported survival below 20%. Common causes include planting the wrong species for the site, planting at the wrong season, drought, grazing animals and a lack of follow-up care.

The factors that make a difference are well known: choosing native species suited to the local soil and rainfall, planting at the start of the rainy season, protecting seedlings from livestock, and coming back to water, weed and replace losses. In many places, helping a forest regenerate naturally from existing roots and seed is cheaper and more successful than planting. Reliable public follow-up on the survival of Ecuador's 2015 seedlings is hard to find, so the long-term outcome of the record day remains unclear.

What one day of planting can teach

The record was partly a public-relations exercise, and that is not a criticism. Getting tens of thousands of people outdoors with a spade connects them to the land around their towns in a way that statistics cannot. Many of the volunteers were children, and a hillside you planted yourself is a hillside you are more likely to care about later.

If you want to help forests where you live, the lessons carry over. Join local groups that plant native species and return to look after them, support the protection of existing woodland, and be wary of schemes that count trees planted but never report how many survive. Ecuador also holds Guinness records for the most plastic bottles recycled in one week and the most people buried in sand at the same time, a reminder that a country can have fun with records while making a serious point.

Sources: AFP via Malay Mail: Ecuador breaks reforestation record; World Scouting: Scouts of Ecuador and the record-breaking reforestation campaign; Ministry of Environment of Ecuador; Wikipedia: Ecuador; Wikipedia: Reforestation; earlier coverage via True Activist. Photos: Business Insider, ThinkProgress, Phys.org.

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