How will you care for your 422 trees?

I won’t be letting these goats anywhere near mine…

From Science daily:

A new Yale-led study estimates that there are more than 3 trillion trees on Earth, about seven and a half times more than some previous estimates. But the total number of trees has plummeted by roughly 46 percent since the start of human civilization, the study estimates.

Using a combination of satellite imagery, forest inventories, and supercomputer technologies, the international team of researchers was able to map tree populations worldwide at the square-kilometer level.

Science Press Release on Rainforests from St James’ Palace

Being a habitual tree-planter myself, I kind of welcome this sort of initiative from Prince Charles and others. I really wish they’d resist the temptation to screw it up with made up politically loaded words like Anthropocene though…

London, Wednesday 8th May 2013 1 St James’s Palace Memorandum on Tropical Forest Science His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales has invited a group of tropical forest scientists, in the company of Ministers, senior representatives of Governments, and leaders from civil society and the private sector, to gather in London at the Royal Society and at St. James’s Palace. In this meeting, we have reviewed and discussed the latest developments and key priorities for tropical forest science in the context of the multiple pressures facing tropical forests.

We hereby: RECOGNIZE that:

1) tropical forests are the greatest terrestrial harbours of biodiversity on this planet, and that they have a major influence on the global cycles of carbon, water, energy and patterns of rainfall;

2) there is immense value in many types of tropical biomes, including rainforests, dry forests, savannahs and mangroves;

3) tropical forests support sustainable livelihoods for people, and provide multiple ecosystem services at local, regional and global scales;