Some very interesting source material can be found here.

As much as I love trees and as profound an impact as the forestry industry has had on my life, I can’t believe I was “today years old” when I found out that the UN General Assembly has designated March 21st the International Day of Forests. This year’s theme is “Forests and Sustainable Production and Consumption,” which makes me think of my father. He worked in the pulp and paper industry for 42 years and always stressed that, if harvested properly and treated with respect, trees can be a valuable renewable resource. One of my favorite childhood memories was when Daddy came to my fifth-grade class to talk about how paper is made and how we can protect forests if we replant trees each time we cut one down. Little did I know, nearly 40 years later that I would have a passion for conservation and ecology but that is absolutely where it started for me. On International Day of the Forest, countries join together to educate their citizens on the importance of maintaining and protecting forests and regulating the timber industry with the help of the Collaborative Partnership of Forests, a group of 15 international agencies organized by the UN . My family always celebrated Mother’s Day with a trip to the greenhouse and several times over the years, my father planted trees in honor of Mama; the dogwood that still blooms every spring is doing its part to reduce carbon emissions while it lives as a reminder of how she is the strength and backbone of our family. It may seem like an overly simple solution to plant a tree to save the environment, but if we all did so just once, it would make a dramatic difference. Have you hugged a tree today?