Living Lands and Waters: MillionTrees Project

Living Lands & Waters (LL&W) is a non-profit organization based in Illinois that participates in Community River Cleanups, Big River Educational Workshops, Tree Plantings, Riverbottom Forest Restoration and an Adopt-a-River Mile program. It was founded by a young man named Chad Pregracke, who as a teenager decided that if the government wasn't going to clean up the trash lining the Mississippi River, he was going to do it himself. So he founded LLW in 1998 to spread his proactive approach to protecting our lands and waters.

Part of LL&W's mission is the MillionTrees Project. This project was started in 2007 in an effort to restore hardwood tree bioversity along the country's major waterways. According to their website, LL&W’s goal is to grow 100,000 trees within the next 2-3 years and 1 MILLION trees within the next 5-10 years. A percentage of trees are returned to their contributors to be planted in local communities after reaching 1-2 years old and the rest are planted along the shorelines and islands of our nation's major waterways. Trees have many benefits including erosion control, wildlife shelter and support, water and air filtration, canopy rain collection, and shade for animals and people. The root system of water bank trees also help control algae build up in the water.

The biggest challenge for the MillionTrees project is collecting the tree seeds. This is where you come in. Follow their guide (shown below) and send them your tree seeds collected from your own trees. You can even receive some of your baby trees back if you wish after they have grown in the nursery.

Follow these steps to help collect seeds:

1. Print out the Acorn Collection Guidelines. This will tell you what kind of seeds we are looking for, how to separate and bag the acorns, what you should bring with you while collecting, and other helpful tips.
2. Print out the Oak/Acorn Identification Guide. This will outline the types of acorns to collect and will help identify those that you find.
3. Print out the Acorn Collection Form. This form will need to be included with the seeds, after collection. This sheet requests your contact information so that we can get in touch with you after we have grown the trees and they are ready to be delivered back to the community (1-2 years after acorn collection).
4. Print out Bag Tags (2 to a page). These tags need to be attached to each bag of acorns and indicates the day of collection, species, collection location, number of acorns in bag, etc.
5. Either send acorns to LL&W or arrange pick up. Details of this step are outlined on the Acorn Collection Form.

For more information on LL&W and the MillionTrees Project, visit their website: Living Land & Waters.

I have 3 acres of forest on my property in Fisherville and it contains many of the species of trees that they wish to collect seeds from. I figure my forest can spare a few acorns for the sake of restoring wildlife and security to our nation's waterways. Please consider doing the same! This would be a great project for local youth organizations as it is both helpful to our community as well as educational.