Green Horizons Newsletter - AgEBB

Green Horizons

Volume 14, Number 2
Spring 2010

5th Grade Arbor Day Poster Contest – Missouri’s Winner

Mariah Harper, a fifth grade student in Sweet Springs, is the Missouri state winner in the 2010 Arbor Day National Poster Contest.

Harper’s poster was selected by a panel of artists and members of the Missouri Community Forestry Council. The contest, sponsored nationally by the National Arbor Day Foundation, asked fifth-grade students to create a poster reflecting the theme “Trees are Terrific….and Energy Wise.” More than 1,500 fifth-grade students from 62 Missouri schools participated.

If you are going to manage your woodlands properly, you need to know where the property lines are. Why? If you are going to have a timber sale, the forester has to know where the property line is so no trees are marked and cut on the neighbor’s property. Missouri State Statutes have a triple damage section concerning trespass. Therefore, as a consulting forester, if I mark for sale trees on your neighbor’s land and they are sold, I am liable for triple damages. If a landowner does not know or have marked or fenced his property lines, I stay away 100 or more feet from where he thinks the line is, or I just will not take the risk and turn down the sale job. The same holds true for a Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) crew who will kill undesirable trees and vines to release and let grow the valuable desirable crop trees. If the woodland owner puts in access roads, waterlines, skid trails, log yarding area, for example, he should/must know where the property lines are.

As the state winner, Harper will receive a $50 savings bond from Forest ReLeaf of Missouri, a framed certificate from the Missouri Community Forestry Council, and a commemorative tree will be planted in her community by the Missouri Department of Conservation.

“Students like Mariah have learned about the importance of trees to our environment and how they can make a difference” says Justine Gartner, Forestry Program Supervisor. “The poster contest is a fun yet educational way to help students understand the value that trees have in the environment. We realize that an awareness of the relationship of trees and our environment begins at a young age. The Missouri Department of Conservation helps promote many conservation education programs, like the recognition of Arbor Day and the poster competition.”

If you would like more information about the 5th Grade Arbor Day Poster Contest, please visit the National Arbor Day Foundation’s website at http://www.arborday.org.

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