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The Forest Park class watches as a tree is planted.
The Forest Park class watches as a tree is planted.
By Allison Joy
CRYSTAL FALLS — Students with the Forest Park School District celebrated Arbor Day on April 29 by planting a few crab apple trees.
The celebratory saplings were just a drop in the bucket though, as students at Forest Park have planted 9,500 trees in its school forests over the last year and will plant another 4,000 seedlings this summer.
The project is funded through a $45,000 grant, with Forest Park one of 10 schools throughout the state participating in the MIchigan Department of Natural Resource’s tree-planting initiative. The project has a budget of $304,000 — $50,000 of which came from the Arbor Day Foundation with the remaining bulk of the funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative via the U.S. Forest Service.
There are five schools in the U.P. participating in the program: Forest Park, North Dickinson, Holman Elementary School, Chassell Township Schools and Tahquamenon Area School.
The $45,000 has been administered to VanOss Forestry to be split evenly between Forest Park and North Dickinson school districts.
As forest manager for both Forest Park and North Dickinson, Brock VanOss oversees roughly 3,000 acres of school-owned forest land and 2,000 just for Forest Park — most (if not all) of which was donated to the school. The schools then serve as stewards of the land, which serves as both a revenue generator for the district as well as a learning tool for students interested in forestry, one of the region’s most powerful economic generators.
“With the difficult budgets and ever-changing expenses the school district has, this is a much-needed and welcomed asset,” VanOss told the Reporter in February 2021, after the grant monies had been allotted.
The 9,500 trees already planted across 58 acres of Forest Park’s school forest include 4,500 red pine and 5,000 white pine. The 4,000 seedlings slotted for planting this summer will include the same as well as crab apple.
Forest Park has three separate parcels of school forest land with a total of just over 2,000 acres. This land is open to the community to hike, bike and otherwise enjoy.
Attendees of Forest Park’s Arbor Day celebration were able to take home trees of their own provided by the DNR. The trees being planted at Forest Park have come from tree farms in Manistique and Wakefield and were purchased through the Iron Baraga Conservation District.