Brett Loney introduced Guest Speaker Alan Briggs to the meeting. Alan is a member of the E-Rotary Club of Western Australia, is a Past President of the Rotary Club of West Perth,  and is a strong supporter of "treemission ©".
The treemission © project started as a collaboration between Rotary and the National Trust of Australia (WA) and Carbon Neutral in 2008. The concept is to encourage people to make a commitment to address climate change and plant trees to offset their contribution to green house gasses and global warming. Treemission © has goals of informing Rotarians, school children and community members about what is happening to our environment, what can be done to address those impacts and taking action by tree planting to ameliorate those impacts.

 

Through treemission ©, emissions accrued in everyday activities can be turned into trees and shrubs; an early form of an Emmissions Trading Scheme perhaps! This will not only help lower carbon levels in our atmosphere but also conserve endangered plants, animals and rehabilitate degraded land. The treemission initiative has established a tax deductible conservation appeal with the National Trust for donations to offset carbon emissions from meetings and daily activities by Rotarians. These donations will enable an area of land to be planted and rehabilitated.

An exciting part of the project is that where possible locally endemic species will be used, and tree and under-storey species will be chosen for reasons of biodiversity. Even more exciting is that collaboration has extended to include urban and rural communities in tree planting activities.

Alan has a passion for trees and the environment. He has been in Professional Forestry since 1980, and has spent a lot of time involved in Conservation and Land Management work, and with the Forest Products Commission. He began an involvement with the National Trust in 2005, with his tree-focussed environmental work being applied in the Wheatbelt area of Western Australia.
 
Because of his continuing passion for trees, and meeting like-minded individuals, theTreemission concept evolved, and came to fruition in 2008. As stated in the introduction, the aim of the treemission © concept is to encourage people to make a commitment to address climate change and plant trees to offset their contribution to green house gases and global warming.
Treemission © has goals that include informing Rotarians, school children and community members about what is happening to our environment, what can be done to address those impacts and taking action by tree planting to ameliorate those impacts. The treemission © concept was presented to the world at the 100th Rotary International Convention in Birmingham (United Kingdom), with the West Australian Agent General at the time, Kerry Sanderson (who became Governor of Western Australia, 2014-2018), assisting with the delivery of the concept.
 
Alan Briggs at Pinjarra Rotary Club
 
At a practical level, the organisation works with community groups, schools and individual farmers to arrange tree planting events. The group ensures that tree species are appropriate to the land into which they are being planted. The positive environmental and economic benefit that follows a sucessful event can be measured by seeing land reclaimed from the degradation caused by salinity or erosion issues.
When looking at the state of some land in the Eastern Wheatbelt of Western Australia, the salinity and erosion issues have caused losses of natural habitat, and inpacted on the productivity of the farms where the degradation has occurred. Some farmers have had to walk off the land in some extreme cases.
An initiative treemission © has pursued has involved the purchase of degraded land, and to use tree-planting to repair the land in order for it to be sold back into the farming industry. Alan indicated that treemission © has had some success with this aspect of their work.
 
Like many groups, treemission © seeks donations to assure that their work can continue. Tax-deductable donations can be made through the National Trust's website: https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/services/treemission/
 
Rotary Clubs are invited to consider donating directly to treemission ©, and to jointly present tree-planting events at appropiate sites within the Club's catchment area.
 
After a number of questions from the meeting, Past President Don McCements presented Alan with a momento of his visit to our Club, and thanked him for his very intersting talk.
 
A short video presentation about the treemission © Project may be viewed at: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=676832623136631