[Ditto]

Iowa has avery aggressive reforestation plan, free seedlings, minimal property taxes, and still people aren't planting many trees.

It's not a "reforestation plan". It's a "forestation" plan. Trees make good wind breaks which is good for soil conversation.

Most of the Great Plains had very little in the way of tress 150 years ago --- (ergo Sod Houses instead of Log Cabins.) There was nothing there to "deforest".

[gandalftb]

It is a reforestation plan, I own timber property there and have planted over 1,600 trees. Unfortunately, farmland is not being converted to hardwood forests. The plan is almost entirely used for existing forests that have been over-harvested and are being reforested with red and white oak, walnuts, and other hardwoods.

Nothing holds soil and water better, slows down the wind, protects cities, roads and homesteads better than trees from the effects of dust storms, rain, wind, blizzards, etc.

That's my point, we need more trees, everywhere.

There certainly were many trees in all the coulees and valleys and in the open plains. There was very little of the classical hardwood forests of the eastern midwest. The sparse trees there were critical to the prairie ecosystem and their loss was the doom of those homesteaders. Drive through Sisseton, S Dakota to Williston, N Dakota as I have many times and see all the trees that have regrown, obviously they were not reseeded and none are over 50 years old. The prairie has largely healed itself after the starving homesteaders who cut down the few trees there, up and left.

[Old Professer]

You are the most creative misspeller ever, now you dress the tops of trees with a tress, such a quaint picture.