Earth Day Tree Planting in East Las Vegas!

We started off this year’s planting season on Earth Day (April 22nd) by planting 14 trees in East Las Vegas at Rafael Rivera Park. Over 25 volunteers representing ImpactNV, the City of Las Vegas, private business, community residents, and student organizations worked together to plant a selection of:

65 gallon Shoe-String Acacias (5 qty)
45 gallon Ghost Gums (3 qty)
45 gallon Red Push Pistache (3 qty)
65 gallon Indian Rosewood trees (3 qty)

We wanted to get these trees in the ground as soon as possible so that they would have a better chance of getting established before the hottest part of the year and we wanted to plant them at this location because it is in one of the census blocks we are focusing on this year. We received a grant from One Tree Planted to plant trees in Southern Nevada with the understanding that those trees would go in areas with low relative tree equity. American Forests came up with the tree equity score because “In cities across America, trees have historically been planted along race and class lines. Ensuring equitable tree cover across every neighborhood can help address social inequities so that all people can thrive.” The tree equity score “calculates scores based on how much tree canopy and surface temperature align with income, employment, race, age and health factors”. Thus, planting trees in areas with low tree equity scores aligns with ImpactNV’s focus on sustainability broadly defined. We recognize that sustainability is and must be economic AND social AND environmental.

Additionally, this tree planting helps get us on our way to the 3800 tree goal we have set for this year in order to stay on track to meet our Statewide 10 Year, 100,000 Tree Plan! We will be planting a couple of trees here and there throughout the summer where feasible before our largest planting event of the year takes place around Nevada Day. We are still in the planning stages for this event but will provide more details as they become available.

Finally, we send a special thank you to:

ImpactNV board members that attended the event
City of Las Vegas employees for providing equipment and instruction as well as for pre-digging the holes
One Tree Planted for the funding and t-shirts
DLR Group for your enthusiastic volunteers
and Pinkbox Doughnuts for coffee, doughnuts, t-shirts, and gift cards

About the Author: Ruth Boitel

Ruth has worked for ImpactNV for over 5 years as a project coordinator and project manager. She started by helping to schedule many of the approximately 18,000 home energy assessments we completed through a contract with NV Energy. She then transitioned to working on the Immigrant Immigration Toolkit and website/social media content. She is also a grad student, working on completing her PhD in political theory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.