| HN Mirror

I can't speak on the Kenyan project you linked, but I did recently complete a 3000 tree habitat project. Even at bulk rates we purchased our trees at between $0.80-0.90 per tree. It took 3 people about 5-6 hours to complete the actual planting using a tractor and a tree planter. Outside of the actual purchase of the trees, other things to consider are: Labor was unpaid, however the county has a cost-sharing program we could have applied for which would have paid ~$8/hr per person to offset labor costs. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these non-profits use volunteer labor but also take advantage of reforestation grants to offset the cost. We borrowed the equipment and only used a couple gallons of diesel, but normally renting that equipment for the day would have been in the hundreds of dollars. Plenty of hours were spent meeting with state foresters to plan where the trees would go for maximum effect and deciding which species to plant. We had to transport the trees from the nursery and store them until they were planted. There is also a very limited window of time between when they are harvested at the nursery and when they need to be planted. If you wait too long many will die. Also to note that we had to call at least 4 nurseries to get the order we wanted. There is a limited supply of seedlings available each season and you have to plan well in advance if you need more than a couple hundred trees. At about a month out we're noticing about 10% dead loss, which is better than expected. Over the next year that could inflate to 30%. The goal shouldn't be to just plant 1T trees, it needs to be adding 1T new healthy trees to the environment, which means you would have to plant 1T + X0B extra to cover the dead loss.

So $1T in cost is a good ballpark to start with, but don't be surprised if it balloons pretty quick. Tree planting doesn't scale as efficiently as we might like.