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Defining Milestones in Community Recovery
How disaster recovery became part of who we are.
September 23, 2025
Our natural disaster recovery efforts began with a simple truth: when forests and communities face devastation, trees can play a powerful role in healing places and people.
This commitment traces back to those first moments after disaster, when neighbors needed support and communities needed something tangible to hold on to. From the earliest calls for help, we’ve responded by planting trees — not only to restore landscapes, but also to provide hope, healing, and a path forward.
The Early Sparks
In 1990, we helped replant in areas impacted by the historic Yellowstone fires — giving us one of our earliest glimpses at how forests can recover after devastation. In nearby Gallatin National Forest, that effort began with 100,000 trees. Today, more than 3 million trees have been planted there, a living reminder of what long-term commitment can restore.
Decades later, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina showed us that disaster recovery isn’t only about restoring forestlands — it’s also about healing communities. During this time, we saw firsthand that trees aren’t just about the environment, they’re about people, memory, and hope. To date, 164,080 trees have been planted and distributed throughout Mississippi and Louisiana, bringing shade, beauty, and resilience back to neighborhoods in recovery.
Turning Response into a Commitment
The years that followed brought tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri, wildfires in Bastrop, Texas, and storms across Alabama. Each disaster underscored the need to dedicate more of our energy and effort to recovery as these events became increasingly common. What began as small distributions of seedling trees evolved into something bigger. Communities told us they needed larger trees that could thrive in urban spaces. We listened, adapted, and reshaped our model. Recovery became about listening to local voices and providing the right tree, in the right place, at the right time.
And we kept learning. Hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and invasive pests each left behind unique challenges that demanded unique responses. As these crises grew more frequent and more severe, we adapted to meet the moment — guided by humility, curiosity, and a commitment to listening first.
Scaling Up Through Partnership
By 2013, we formalized a growing approach that had guided our efforts from the beginning: stand alongside communities through recovery — not only in the immediate aftermath, but for the long journey ahead. To meet the unique challenges of every disaster-struck area, we developed a focused approach to provide specialized support. That’s when the Community Tree Recovery program officially took root. With visionary support from corporate partners like FedEx — who underwrote the program for an entire year — this work expanded on a national scale. That commitment allowed us to respond with intention and consistency after hurricanes like Sandy, wildfires in California, floods in the Midwest, and many other disasters.
Over time, our network grew from a handful of forestry coordinators to a broad coalition of nonprofits, municipalities, and grassroots leaders — not just in the United States, but globally. Each partnership reminded us that recovery succeeds only when guided by the people who call these places home.
Expanding What Recovery Means
As disasters have become more intense, our strategy has evolved and expanded to meet the needs of forests and communities. Recovery no longer means only planting new trees — sometimes it means watering the ones that survived, repairing soil, or supporting creative local solutions. After wildfires in Los Angeles, for example, donor funds were directed toward the maintenance and watering of existing trees — trees that otherwise would not have survived without extra care.
Shaped by the Past, Committed to the Future
From Yellowstone to Katrina, Joplin to Paradise, and now Maui, our path has been defined by listening, adapting, and growing with each experience. What began as a series of one-off responses has become a core part of who we are: a disaster recovery partner communities can count on for the long haul.
Along the way, we’ve also learned that recovery isn’t only about the headline-grabbing disasters. It’s about the smaller, local storms too — the ones that may not make national news but still upend neighborhoods and lives. Whether it’s a named hurricane or a “storm with no name,” our commitment is the same: to be present, to listen, and to support.
Today, we don’t just plant trees after disasters. We plant hope. We plant resilience. We plant renewal.
