Well we did it. The Snowies are officially rewilded. At least that’s what it felt like after our planting day with Keep It Cool. 

 

We finally got our hands dirty and stuck 1,000 trees in the ground with a motley group of Explorers and legendary Jindabyne locals. 

Rewild the What?

It feels like yonks ago that we ran our Rewild the Snowies campaign to raise money to help plant and nurture 6,000 trees in the Snowy Mountains region in NSW. In 2020 we smashed our goals and raised $40,000 to plant 8,000 trees thanks to, well, you! 

 

 

While COVID knows how to ruin a party (our tree planting party!), it wasn’t going to stop Lucas from Keep It Cool from getting those trees in the ground. 

There’s a specific window of time for the trees to be planted in order to give them the best chance of survival, so we could delay no further and got our butts down to Jindy last week.

The Planting Day

The property, Illangani, is the home of Laure, Will, their two rugrats Lenny and Pip, and their dog Magoo.

 

 

As they aren’t farmers, rewilding parts of the property was a no brainer for them when they moved in two years ago. Keep It Cool has already run two planting days on the property and there’ll be a few more We Are Explorers sponsored events in the next few weeks. 

 

 

If you want to volunteer at a planting day you can sign up through the Keep It Cool website. You’ll meet a bunch of awesome humans who care about the planet and spend the day giving back to nature. Plus, they’ll no doubt take you to the brewery afterwards!

Planting is easy as one, two, tree!

To make things easier, lines had already been ripped into the soil by a machine, to allow moisture in and make digging easy peasy on planting day. Then in groups we dug a hole, chucked in a fertiliser tablet, popped in a native tree or shrub, refilled in the soil, placed a plant guard, and stake over the top, and finished the process off with a good dose of H2O. Voila! 

 

 

Little Lenny had an important message for every tree he helped to plant, and I think it’s one that we would all benefit from hearing. 

‘Good luck Mr Tree, eat all your vegetables!’  

Thousands of tiny trees are now starting their new lives as the inaugural class of a Snowies regen forest in Dalgety. In years to come, they’ll be a crucial part of carbon sequestration and play an important ecological role in Australia’s largest alpine region.

VIEW GALLERY

Photos thanks to @thetantrap