The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) initiated the Texas Environmental Excellence Awards (TEAA) in 1993 to celebrate the efforts of individuals, communities, and businesses to preserve and protect the Texas environment and to encourage others to do the same. The awards are presented every spring in up to nine categories. In 2015, TreeFolks was honored in the Civic/Community category for its reforestation work Bastrop County.
As of the writing of this post, TreeFolks volunteers and partners have planted and given away more than one million trees to reforest the Lost Pines. TCEQ created this video about TreeFolks reforestation program as part of its awards ceremony on May 6, 2015 and we are pleased to be able to share it here with you! You can also visit the TEAA website to view the video there and read the award narrative.
The Bastrop County Community Reforestation Program (BCCRP) completed its third season of replanting loblolly pine and hardwood trees for private land owners whose properties burned in the 2011 Bastrop County Complex Fire. The 2011 Bastrop County Complex Fire was the most destructive wildfire in Texas history, affecting over 34,000 acres of the Lost Pines region in Bastrop County. An estimated 75 percent of that acreage had private owners. Besides destroying over 1,600 homes and inflicting property damage estimated at $325 million, the fire devastated the native population of loblolly pines, leaving many of the affected properties severely burned and unlikely to recover their original pine coverage. In response to this disaster, the Lost Pines Forest Recovery Campaign was started by a coalition of organizations to begin the process of reforestation on both public and private lands. TreeFolks is a member of the Lost Pines Forest Recovery Campaign and was asked to lead reforestation efforts on private lands because of its experience organizing volunteers to plant trees in public parks.
