The group, armed with gardening gloves, hiking boots and rain jackets, gathered at ArtsAltoona on Tuesday morning to sort and label the bounty of plants ahead of a busy week distributing the trees into the community.

The 10 Million Trees Partnership is a CBF initiative that strives to plant

10 million native trees across the commonwealth by 2025 by using a network of local, state and federal collaborators, according to the website.

The CBF provides thousands of free plants to local partners across the state to distribute during two annual events, one in the spring and the other in autumn, in addition to continuous efforts all year.

Woodland Owners of the Southern Alleghenies president Laura Jackson and her husband Mike Jackson work on filling their order of trees for distribution. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

Greg Williams, a volunteer from Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light, which helps arrange the biannual event, said that PAIPL has “probably distributed close to 250,000 (plants)” since the group partnered with the CBF six or seven years ago.

These plants go to recipients located throughout Bedford, Blair, Centre, Clearfield, Huntingdon and Somerset counties, among others, he added. Thousands of the trees now line the Lower Trail and other local outdoor recreation areas.

The interfaith organization has united motivated individuals, like Williams, across religious distinctions to support environmental justice for more than a decade, according to the group’s website.

“It connects people of faith who believe climate change is real, that it’s an issue and that we ought to be doing something about it,” Williams said, “and one of the things I like to do about it is plant native trees.”

According to Williams, freshly planted native trees can help improve the biodiversity of local ecosystems while sequestering carbon from the atmosphere to combat the greenhouse gas effect.

Volunteer Ron Porter of Pine Grove Mills helps tag trees on Tuesday at ArtsAltoona. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

Since some species of insects only eat specific native plants, planting more of these particular trees can bolster the insect population, which feeds the bird population and improves the ecosystem as a whole, Williams said.

The trees arrived early Tuesday, Williams said, at the local distribution hub at the ArtsAltoona center on Sixth Avenue to be sorted and labeled by species.

This year, the group is distributing several varieties of oak and dogwood that are native to Pennsylvania, as well as pawpaw trees, one of the only fruit trees native to Appalachia.

“They can learn about the species while they watch them grow,” Williams said.

Alongside the interfaith group, volunteers from the Juniata Valley Audubon Society, Bishop Guilfoyle Academy, United Church of Christ and a number of other groups will work to distribute the 4,475 trees throughout the week.

Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light board member Greg Williams and other volunteers tag flowering dogwood trees at ArtsAltoona on Tuesday afternoon. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

“There’s also a ton of people (here) who aren’t religious but think they ought to be doing this,” Williams said.

More than 3,700 of the plants were reserved in advance by local organizations, with the remaining 600 or 700 to be given away for free starting Friday during a “tree-for-all” event, Williams said.

The event will run from 9 a.m. till dusk on Friday, from 4 p.m. till dusk on Saturday and 8 a.m. till noon on Sunday at ArtsAltoona, or until all the plants have been distributed.

Volunteers will also offer plastic support cones to ward off animals and planting advice to recipients of the trees, he said.

For Williams, and many of the other volunteers, the mission of the 10 Million Trees Partnership is a moral imperative.

“We believe that God created the world, and while it may have developed through evolution, there is a divine hand in there, and we ought to be taking care of anything there is a divine hand in,” Williams said. “That was His charge to us, too.”

Laura Jackson, along with her husband, Mike, came from their home in Bedford to volunteer.

As members of both the Bedford County Bird and Nature Club and the Woodland Owners of the Southern Alleghenies, Jackson said that she

first got involved three years ago on behalf of the Woodland group.

According to Jackson, a Bedford resident had asked WOSA to help reforest a hay field on his property, but the group was limited by the high-cost of buying saplings for the project.

“Fortunately, I found out from (Williams) that this program was happening,” Jackson said. “And we have planted over 1,000 trees in that hay field.”

By focusing on planting native species, such as persimmon and eastern redbud, the reforesting project will help support biodiversity on the former field, Jackson said.

The field reforestation is just one of the projects that is made possible by the CBF plant distribution partnership, with a number of other sites across southcentral Pennsylvania now featuring native trees, Jackson said.

“They last for decades and they provide a wonderful habitat for birds and other animals,” she said. “Much better than a corn field or a hay field.”

Mirror Staff Writer Conner Goetz is at 814-946-7535.