DNR Celebrates Arbor Day To Conclude Forest Appreciation Week, April 20-24

MADISON, Wis. – Together with its partners across the state and beyond, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has celebrated trees and forests during Forest Appreciation Week, April 20-24. Highlights of the week-long celebration include Earth Day (Wednesday, April 22) and Arbor Day (Friday, April 24).

Earth Day, Arbor Day and Forest Appreciation Week provide a chance to reflect on the importance of rural and urban forests and their value to the state's environment, economy, public health and collective identity. 

Wisconsin’s forests, including the 17 million acres of rural forestland and hundreds of thousands of acres of urban forests, serve a vital role in the ecological, socio-cultural and economic health of our state, our communities and our individual lives.

Forests provide countless environmental and quality-of-life benefits, as well as important economic benefits. These include sequestering and storing carbon, protecting air and water quality, capturing and filtering stormwater, providing wildlife habitat, supplying renewable energy, reducing energy consumption, cooling urban landscapes, improving air quality, improving social connection and supporting the forest products industry. Wisconsin’s forests not only store an immense amount of carbon in the soil, roots and aboveground tree parts, but each year they continue to sequester approximately 15% of the state’s carbon dioxide emissions produced by the use of fossil fuels. 

The Wisconsin DNR Division of Forestry works with partners to care for our state’s forests. A few of the ways forests are managed include:

• The reforestation program, which has supplied Wisconsin landowners with more than 1.6 billion seedlings since 1911. The program offers a free seedling to every fourth-grade student in Wisconsin (upon their schools’ request) as part of its annual Arbor Day tree planting program.
• Administering the nation’s largest collection of sustainably certified forestlands at 6.4 million acres, which includes the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, Forest Stewardship Council and American Tree Farm System.
• Providing urban forestry training through the Wisconsin Community Tree Management Institute and supporting an impressive number of Tree City USA communities, with 195 municipalities recognized in 2025. Four cities, Eau Claire, Sheboygan, Stevens Point and West Allis, have been a Tree City for over 40 years.
• Conducting studies and assisting with development of a market for mass timber construction, which can be a significant method of storing carbon and reducing emissions.
• Monitoring the health of forests by assessing insect and disease outbreaks as well as tree seedling survival across the state.
• Protecting people, property and natural resources while strategically using prescribed fire to enhance natural communities and ecosystems.

Expanding on the above efforts and responding to an ever-growing need to address impacts from climate change, Gov. Tony Evers announced Wisconsin's Trillion Trees Pledge on Earth Day 2021. The pledge is an ambitious initiative to plant 100 million trees and conserve 125,000 acres of forestland in Wisconsin by the end of 2030. Focused on both rural and urban areas and addressing the equitable distribution of urban tree canopy, the pledge includes a goal to plant 1 million of the 100 million trees in urban areas.  

In 2025, Wisconsinites planted almost 12 million trees and protected more than 7,000 acres of forestland, putting the total at over 54.7 million trees since the pledge began in 2021. That represents almost 55 percent of the tree-planting goal; and more than 84,560 acres, nearly 68 percent of the conservation goal. In urban areas, 2025 saw the largest number of trees planted since the pledge began with 185,207, bringing the urban total to 485,411, or 49% of the goal.

In five years of the pledge, the carbon impact achieved from tree planting will boost Wisconsin’s forest carbon sequestration over the next 50 years by 15 million metric tons. This is the equivalent of removing 92% of Wisconsin’s 3.5 million passenger vehicles for one year.

“We all have the power to take action to ensure that forests, both urban and rural, continue to thrive,” said Carmen Hardin, DNR Applied Forestry bureau director.

Wisconsin residents can participate in the Trillion Trees Pledge and support forests by:

• Planting trees and recording them on the Wisconsin Tree Planting Map.
• Caring for trees in their neighborhood.
• Volunteering on their local tree board, park committee, or nature preserve.
• Providing public comments to state, county or municipal forest plans.
• Supporting federal, state and local programs that fund tree planting and tree care programs.
• Supporting teachers so that more can engage in the fourth-grade tree seedling giveaway.
• Favoring wood-based products, especially Wisconsin-grown forest products.
• Signing up and participating in the Happy Little 5K Run for the Trees, which raised more than $12,000 for tree planting and forest health efforts in Wisconsin last year.
• Collecting and selling tree seed to the Wisconsin State Nursery.
• Participating in programs such as DNR’s Forest Landowners Programs, UW-Madison Division of Extension Forestry Programs and the Aldo Leopold Foundation’s My Wisconsin Woods for those that own or manage private forestland.

Engagement in tree planting and forest stewardship by communities, forest landowners and residents of all ages are key to ensuring that Wisconsin continues to have healthy and sustainable urban and rural forests that support strong and resilient communities.

Learn more about Wisconsin forestry programs.