Rhode Island Arbor Day Celebration

DEM is cosponsoring a tree planting at Brayton Park in Cranston as part of an Arbor Day Celebration, along with the Rhode Island Tree Council.

Each year, Arbor Day is celebrated on the last Friday of April to mark the importance of trees to the environment, culture, and economy. The first Arbor Day was celebrated in Nebraska in 1872, and more than a million tree plantings were planted there. Rhode Island began celebrating the day in 1887. In addition to Arbor Day, Rhode Island is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act this year and urge Rhode Islanders to take action to confront climate change and live more sustainably.

Rhode Island's over 386,000 acres of forest protect drinking water, improve air quality, mitigate climate change, provide opportunities for outdoor recreation, promote health, harbor wildlife, and create economic value. They provide a "sense of place" to rural communities, suburbs, and cities alike and offer quiet solitude from a culture obsessed with screens and social media.

DEM's Division of Forest Environment and Agriculture works across the state with property owners and rural and urban communities on a wide range of forestry topics including forest heath, forest fire prevention, community tree planting, and private forest land management to maximize the positive benefits that forests bring to all Rhode Islanders. The division also manages 40,000 acres of state-owned rural forestland including the Arcadia and George Washington Management Areas, popular venues for outdoor recreation.

More than 50% of Rhode Island is forested, with most forest land owned by private citizens who face increased pressure to develop it for other uses. The most common forest health threats are from development or through fragmentation of large, forested parcels into smaller parcels, making sustainable forest management difficult. Healthy forests are essential to public health and well-being and form an important part of the state's natural infrastructure. From providing us with food to eat, paper for the books we read, and materials from which we build our homes and other products, forests have tremendous environmental, economic, and cultural benefits.