Posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2012 by Brooke Weinbaum
In 2011, forest fires destroyed more than 40,000 acres of Chile’s National Park, Patagonia. Out of this tragedy comes Reforest Patagonia, an innovative online project enlisting the help of thousands of people around the world to rebuild Chile’s national park.
How much does a cup of coffee cost you? If you’re a Starbucks addict like myself, a cup of joe will set you back almost $4. The same amount as it costs to plant your own tree in fact…
Reforest Patagonia is an extraordinary project headed up by Matias Rivera aiming to “leverage technology and social media” to enlist the help of thousands of internet users around the world to plant enough new trees to help “recover the delicate and pristine ecosystems” ravaged by the man-made fire that almost destroyed Chile’s national park. You can join in with the project and adopt a new tree in Patagonia for that $4 you saved by buying one less cup of coffee this week.
The site’s main display is a visualization of all the trees that have been replanted so far by donors like you or me. The green trees are ones that have already been replanted, while the grey ones are the spaces of the national park still waiting to be filled. As you can see by the vast swathes of green (and the vast number on the tree count), this is a project that has really caught the online world’s imagination.
And you can be a part of it too. Not sure what to buy the person who has everything? Perhaps the donation of a few Patagonian trees in their name is that inspirational gift they can’t find at the mall!
Besides helping rebuild the forest, the most captivating part of donating a tree is being able to have the exact GPS coordinates of where the tree has been planted. After purchasing the tree, Reforest Patagonia will send you a Certificate of Reforestation, along with a link to your individual tree on Google Maps, so you can actually see it!
So far 119,926 trees have been planted. Are you the next to Reforest Patagonia with just a few clicks?
