Virtual forest reaches 200,000 trees milestone

The West Midlands ' commitment to the environment has reached another major milestone as more than 200,000 trees have now been planted and registered on the Virtual Forest by organisations and individuals across the region.

Since January 2020, West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) has been encouraging residents and businesses to get involved in tree planting through its Virtual Forest initiative.

As an official partner of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, Severn Trent have been a major contributor to this milestone, planting 72 Tiny Forests - one to represent each nation or territory taking part in Birmingham 2022 and named after a bird or flower of the country it represents.

More than 2,000 people from schools and local communities took part in Severn Trent 's Tiny Forest planting day with 44,400 trees being planted.

As well as the Tiny Forests, Severn Trent has also committed to planting 2022 acres of new forest in the Midlands through a Legacy Forest campaign.

This initiative will look to sequester most of the carbon from hosting the Games, as well as to increase the tree coverage across the region. Much of this tree planting will take place in 2022/2023.

West Midlands mayor Andy Street said: “I commend everyone involved for their brilliant collective efforts to improve our natural environment and help protect, restore and enhance our communities.

“For more information and to get involved, I encourage local residents to visit the Virtual Forest website and join in with all of our tree planting activities. ”

The Virtual Forest was launched at the same time as #WM2041, which is WMCA 's plan to be achieve net zero carbon by 2041.

This ambitious target for the region will support the delivery of the government 's national target to achieve net zero carbon by 2050 while leaving no-one behind.

Pictured: Andy Street, Cllr Heather Timms, Warwickshire 's portfolio lead on climate and Kristie Naimo, director at ARC (Achieving Results in Communities) who manage the Children's Forest at Leasowe Farm, Radford