Rich-er by 1,000 trees: destruction spurs teen to form a nonprofit and recreate a forest

American Forests, Spring, 2005 by Margaret A. Haapoja

Sixteen-year-old Matthew Rich felt devastated when he watched bulldozers pushing over 100-year-old walnut trees in the sub-division where he and his family lived in Concord, North Carolina. A forest of mature native hardwoods had covered half the property when they moved in; within six months, developers had leveled the land. Matthew decided to act.

"I thought about it for several months," he says, "Over the past couple of years, I'd noticed there had been so much building going on. I was just trying to think of a way to restore the trees that have been cut down in the forest."

With a teen's enthusiasm and $60 of his own money, Matthew researched establishing a nonprofit dedicated to restoring the woodland habitat. In March 2003, with support from his mother, Melody, and his friend Micah Stowers, he founded the Woodland and Wildlife Restoration Committee (WWRC). The WWRC set a goal of planting 1,000 trees to help reforest the community. Matthew spearheaded its first fund-raiser: a garage sale that raised $101, enough to purchase eight trees. In June 2003, he and Micah planted those trees at Carillon Assisted Living Center in Harrisburg, North Carolina.

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That summer, Matthew and his WWRC came to the attention of local garden editor Nancy Brachey of the Charlotte Gazette. Brachey was so impressed by Matthew and his ambitious project that she wrote a front-page article, coining the name "One Tree at a Time." She came to the first planting and instructed volunteers in how to plant the new trees.

"Everything fell into place because of that article," says Matthew. "Funding was a major obstacle at first, but once Nancy's article came out in the paper, we got roughly $2,000 in donations from people in the Charlotte area."

In August, Matthew applied for--and got--matching grants from both Cabarrus County and the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources. In writing those grant proposals, he began to realize the tremendous scope of the project: an estimated 3,000 hours of work and a lot of money. Not long after that, Matthew received a call from Deano Orr, public affairs manager for International Paper (IP) in Raleigh. Orr, who had read Brachey's article, offered him a thousand trees.

"We were just blown away by Matthew's commitment to reforestation," says Orr. IP's donated trees included several kinds of oak, persimmon, green ash, dogwood, pecan, sugar maple, and sycamore.

The most difficult challenge, according to Matthew, was finding enough land to plant 1,000 trees. "He wanted to create a forest," says Steve Little, director of Cabarrus County's parks and recreation department, "and that's what he's done." Matthew selected a high visibility site near the road in Frank Liske Park, a park near Concord that is visited by 170,000 people annually.

Little by little, Matthew enlisted more than 200 volunteers to help with the spade work--students from Matthew's First Assembly Christian School, Jay R. Robinson High School, and local Boy Scout troops. The WWRC began planting trees in December 2003.

On February 13, 2004, Matthew Rich's dream came true with a ceremony celebrated the planting of the thousandth tree. To mark the milestone, WWRC and Cabarrus County Parks and Recreation donated three large sycamores, Matthew's favorite tree. Named "The Trinity," the trio of sycamores stands next to the jogging trail.

Now a freshman at Duke University, Matthew is looking ahead to law school. "The One Tree at a Time project did affect my career goals," he says. "I'm thinking of specializing in environmental law." And some day, Matthew will walk through the tall hardwoods in Frank Liske Park remembering how that inspiration began, One Tree at a Time.

Margaret Haapoja writes from Bovey, Minnesota.