Repairing the riparian with TreeFolks

Seeing a creek or river usually is a beautiful thing, framed by cypress and other trees with vegetation all green on both sides of the banks. The clear flowing water is green or blue or something in between. Birds, deer, and other creatures are abundant and enjoy the river, probably as much as people do, vacationers and locals. Laughter, and smiles are the order of the day.

Then you wake up one rainy morning, the color green is gone from the river, replaced by a fast moving brown. Everything is of that one color, the color brown, only brown. Broken trees, half trees, vanished trees, destruction everywhere. Where everything was green and happy, now only sorrow and “I can’t believe it’s all gone.”

Although six years have passed since 2015, the year of holiday floods, Memorial Day and Halloween in Hays County, there are still scars of that time remaining. That’s when TreeFolks kicked into action and tried to lessen the damage of the forty-foot plus water flow on the riverbank by having its volunteers planting trees along the river.

The Central Texas Floodplain Reforestation Program is now underway by TreeFolks a 501(c) 3 nonprofit. Their mission “is to empower Central Texans to build stronger communities through planting and caring for trees.” Their program helped to restock the damage done by the 2015 floods in Hays County. Now, they are taking it one step further.

“This program, our Central Texas Floodplain Reforestation Program, works to restore degraded creeks and streams and rivers. Just call the riparian areas that forest buffer along the waterways. And so we're looking for landowners to do reforestation services for that missing forest buffer along their waterways,” Tree Folks Reforestation Coordinator, Valerie Tamburri said.

An ongoing project of restoring riverbanks started in Eastern Travis County, now progressing to the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization is for Bastrop, Burnet, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties.

“We did the trees for Blanco, which was funded mostly by Hays County. We don't really have county funding for it at the moment so the purpose is to generate carbon credits to help fund the trees. This on does require landowners to do a 25 year protection on their planting area similar to an easement.” Tamburri said.

“This one ensures that the landowners don't mow down the trees before we generate the carbon credits in the 25 years. We found that about 11% of the people mowed the areas down because I guess they got tired of the overgrown areas.”

Partnering with the nonprofit City Forest Credits to collect the carbon credits, the paperwork and filing fees are forwarded and they are given the credits, which can be used internationally.

A credit allows a country or organization to produce a certain amount of carbon emissions and which can be traded if the full allowance is not used. A carbon credit is a permit that allows the company that holds it to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases.

One credit permits the emission of a mass equal to one ton of carbon dioxide. Credits are based on the amount of carbon that will be sequestered from the atmosphere.

“We cover all the filing fees and do all the paperwork on that end and they forward us credits based on the amount of carbon that will be sequestered from the atmosphere for 25 years,” Tamburri said. “If somebody cuts down the trees we have to pay back that difference to the carbon credit registry. So that kind of protects us, as well as helping fund the program.”

TreeFolks’ is funded by grants, and helped by the Arbor Day Foundation in order to connect with business sponsors. In order to apply, the land must be within the one hundred year flood plain.

TreeFolks hopes to keep restoring areas, preserving wildlife habitats, water filtration and most importantly, helping to remedy climate change.

Landowners in Travis, Bastrop, Hays, Williamson, Caldwell, and Burnet counties interested in protecting their land while creating a positive impact on the environment are encouraged to apply at treefolks.org/reforestation-services/central-texas-floodplain/. For more information, visit treefolks.org.