The physical nature of reforestation work is painfully obvious to anyone who has spent at least one day working as a tree planter. Tree planters like to consider that the work is the most difficult job in Canada, and that the job is as physically demanding as running a marathon every day. But, perhaps due to the isolated workplace, there has been a relative paucity of data on the physiological, metabolic, or psychological demands of the work.

In January 1933 the United States faced a dire emergency.  They were in the depths of the depression during a catastrophic environmental disaster. The economy of the United States had collapsed and thousands of impoverished young men were without jobs or money and "riding the rails".  A severe and prolonged drought had turned the Great Plains into a "dust bowl". 

REDD - Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation is a proposed mechanism to protect the world's remaining tropical rainforests and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties 11 (COP11) in 2005, the REDD mechanism has had an official subcommittee negotiating its terms of reference. It has been a controversial mechanism as it can be implemented in many ways, and discussions about perverse incentives and negative side effects are fierce. The benefits scarcely need describing.

For decades, conservationists in the US have been experimenting with a variety of techniques that allow for the integration of economic activities with the permanent conservation of natural resources. Americans hold dear both their private property rights and their land ethic, and have been searching for a permanent land conservation mechanism that resonates with the complex yet interrelated public and private values associated with land.