MEET THE TREE ANGEL HELPING TO SAVE OUR PLANET
It took two near-death experiences to give birth to David Milarch’s beautiful mission: Planting new forests with ancient trees. It is not quite an oxymoron at its core. It is accomplished by cloning our planet’s oldest trees and planting their identical progeny just as our forests are dying at an alarmingly escalating rate. Milarch, a nurseryman from Michigan, became inspired when he came back to life after being pronounced dead. As told in the moving biography, The Man Who Planted Trees by Jim Robbins, Milarch says that archangels spoke to him and sent him back to save himself by saving the world with trees.
Milarch imagined that trees that have lasted through centuries and millennia, triumphing over disease, pests, climate change, pollution, loggers, and other hazards, were likely to have superior DNA. His plan is that if we could plant new trees, using their extraordinary genes, we could grow forests that could survive better. He calls these ancient trees, some as old as 5,000 years, Champion Trees.
His work is hopefully not arriving too late: A recent article in the Journal Science concludes that we are heading towards a tipping point, as millions of acres of trees die around the world. Forests are giant air producers and carbon sinks. Without them, we have nothing to create the air we breathe and nothing to absorb the CO2 we emit.
In December 2012, Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, founded by Milarch, planted 250 ancient redwood trees on a remote hillside in southern Oregon.
Read more about Milarch and his Champion Tree initiative in the new book, The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet
