Expert issues warning over sad truth behind popular tree-planting videos: 'Stop falling for the lies'

Videos of people planting hundreds of trees often go viral for appearing to have a positive impact on forests, but one botanist is raising concerns that these videos are actually a form of greenwashing.

Jessie Dickson (@sacramentofoodforest) on TikTok posted a video about the trend, asking in the caption, "Why do we see so many videos going viral of people planting thousands of trees where old growth forests once stood?" 

@sacramentofoodforest Why do we see so many videos going vrial of people planting thousands of trees where old growth forests once stood? Monoculture forests are green deserts where only profit matters and biodiversity crashes. Today I want to talk about Green Washing aka providing false information about the environment to make your company or industry look good. Planting a bunch of lumber trees where Old Growth forest used to be doesn't help the environment. Clear cut loggers are using this app to Greenwash how they treat the forest like a cash crop and turn it into a monoculture lumber forest. That make wildfires deadly and destroy everything. Stop falling for the lies! Protect old growth forests from clear cut loggers in California and Canada before they are all gone. #greenwashing #oldgrowth #forest #logging #climatechange #planting #trees #wildfire #redwoods #secondgrowth #tree #plantation #fire #greed #sustainability #nature #endangeredspecies #wildlife #california #canada #nativeplants #native #trees #nativehabitatproject #nativeplanttok #calltoaction #plantlover #eco #botany #plantingtrees ♬ Last Hope (Slowed + Reverb) - Steve Ralph

According to Dickson, these types of videos are a way for clear-cut loggers to look like they're helping the environment, when they're really just planting lumber trees for profit where old-growth forests have burned or have been cleared. In other words, it's greenwashing by appearing eco-friendly without making real, effective improvements.

"Monoculture forests are green deserts where only profit matters and biodiversity crashes," argues Dickson, referring to the plantings including only one type of tree and lacking healthy variation — a point that has also been made elsewhere.

That makes "wildfires deadly and destroy everything," Dickson continued in the caption. "Stop falling for the lies! Protect old growth forests from clear cut loggers in California and Canada before they are all gone."

Dickson's point about the increased fire danger of monoculture is an important one, especially with increases in extreme weather events such as droughts and wildfires that are amplified by an overheating planet. 

Native plants tend to have much stronger fire resistance, thanks to adaptations suited to local conditions, according to experts on Bob Vila's website, making them better suited to ensure a forest's healthy future.

Handled carefully and correctly, large tree plantings can have major positive effects, as organizations such as the United Nations and the Arbor Day Foundation have detailed.

But unfortunately, as Dickson noted, many people are being led to believe that simply planting the same types of trees all in a big group is an effective reforestation solution. 

An opinion essay in The New York Times in 2023 titled "We Thought We Were Saving the Planet, but We Were Planting a Time Bomb" recounted a similar situation of someone planting trees as part of a program, only to learn later they were planting a highly flammable monoculture forest. 

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People in the comments were grateful for Dickson's breakdown of the less-than-helpful trend.

"Thank you for sharing this. Simple solutions without research and greenwashing is just not the answer. We need to do so much better," one person wrote. 

Another added: "I feel the same way about those people that take seed shakers around and just introduce invasive plants into ecosystems but get praise for it."

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