Replant.ca Environmental

When did you get started?

Although we had already been planting small numbers of volunteer trees for more than a decade, we formalized the creation of Replant.ca Environmental in late 2018 as a distinct organization to build demonstration forests and assist with carbon capture. We grew quickly, and for the past few years we've averaged in excess of half a million trees per year. You can visit our history page for additional information.

Who founded Replant.ca Environmental?

Jonathan "Scooter" Clark is the president and CEO of Replant.ca Environmental. Jonathan has an extensive amount of experience in Canada's reforestation industry, having worked for more than fifteen tree planting companies, and having planted well over a million trees himself. Jonathan is also well known for being the creator of the original Replant.ca website that taught people about Canadian tree planting. He is also the author of Step By Step, Canada's foremost training textbook about the tree planting industry.

Do you do any logging?

Replant.ca Environmental does not do any logging or deforestation work. Although some members of the management team work at other tree planting companies for part of each year (in the commercial post-harvest reforestation sector), the Replant.ca Environmental organization does not work for or with any logging companies.

What species do you plant?

We have planted more than twenty species in the past, although the exact mix varies from year to year. Sourcing deciduous seedlings in bulk at a reasonable cost is a challenge, and we are currently considering the possibility of building our own deciduous greenhouse operation in 2026 to supply our internal needs.

What kinds of herbicides do you use on your plantations?

We do not use any herbicides or pesticides or fungicides on any of our projects. Incidentally, the use of herbicides in reforestation has already been banned in Prince Edward Island and Ontario. We expect several other provinces to enact similar legislation in the next few years.

Is this a scam?

No. This is a legitimate provincially-registered corporation. We are registered with the Canada Revenue Agency. All of our finances are processed by Thirteen Towers Inc., which was registered and has been in business in New Brunswick since 1998. If you'd like to contact us to ask questions that are not answered on this page, please email questions@replant.ca and we'll do our best to respond in writing, or if you'd prefer, we can schedule a phone call. Members of the public are welcome to visit our demonstration forest projects. We understand the skepticism that leads some visitors to ask this question, and we hope that the high visibility of our projects is beneficial to our stakeholders and to the public at large. It's very easy to visit our planting sites and to see the trees that we've planted.

Are you a registered charity?

We are registered with the Canada Revenue Agency as a tax-paying corporation in good standing, incorporated provincially. Due to the fact that our corporation advises private landowners about reforestation projects, and operates as an ongoing concern in the forestry consulting sector, we are not eligible to become registered as a charity. However, other charities are able to use us as a direct service provider. Any individual or company making a contribution to Replant.ca Environmental will receive a receipt for their financial support, along with a breakdown of the HST component. All CRA-registered companies (sole proprietorships, partnerships, joint ventures, and corporations) are able to claim their contributions as a business expense to reduce taxable income. GST/HST registrants will also be able to use the built-in HST component as a direct tax credit.

What happens if you exceed your budgeted costs?

We lock in our cost commitments with suppliers at each step of our operations, to ensure that we can't exceed budgeted costs. This ensures that we will always be able to plant at least one tree for each dollar donated.

What happens if you have money left over after buying and planting the expected number of trees?

We plant extra trees.

What other organizations do you work with?

A few of the projects that we manage are funded entirely by our public sponsors and individual donors. More frequently, we act as a supply partner to plant the trees for NGO's and corporate partners. NGO's include major organizations such as Trees For Life, One Tree Planted, Forests Ontario, and Veritree. Our business partners include both large corporations such as Beam Suntory (Alberta Pure Vodka), TenTree Clothing and SRC, and smaller family owned businesses such as Larrek, Hone Workshop, Wave Engineering, Reboxible, and dozens of others. When we work as a supply partner to an NGO which provides funding support, that organization gets to "claim" the trees that were planted, and we simply manage the boots-on-the-ground operations for them. We've also worked many times with the 2 Billion Tree program which is spearheaded by NRCan, both as a proponent and as a service provider to other project proponents. We're currently planting an average of approximately 750,000 trees per year, but most of those trees are claimed by our sponsoring partners.

How do you pay for marketing?

The founder of Replant.ca Environmental (Jonathan) seeded the company with sufficient funding to cover all marketing expenses. The marketing budget from those funds included corporate set-up fees, merchandise for donors (hats, shirts), stickers, mailers, postage, brochures, letterhead, business cards, and internet advertising. We do not use any donated funds for marketing or office expenditures. All donated funds are used exclusively for the costs associated with the planting operations. On a side note, our annual expenditures on marketing are quite small, usually under a thousand dollars per year. Most people who discover us hear about our work through word-of-mouth, or due to search engines hitting our website and blog.

Do you only plant trees on projects in Atlantic Canada?

It is easiest for us to plant in the four Atlantic province (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) simply because our operations are headquartered close to the center of the Maritimes (a few minutes away from the NS/NB border). We occasionally do projects in western Canada and in the prairie provinces.

Do you ever plant trees on private property?

Although our main focus is on our demonstration forests and carbon capture projects, we are also able to plant sponsored trees on the sponsor's own property. However, there are several restrictions for this type of activity. The geographic area has to be suitable, the type of land has to be suitable, and the size of the property has to meet a certain minimum. Currently, we can only accommodate this type of request for properties in parts of Atlantic Canada, and the size of the property generally has to be at least five acres (we typically plant at a density of 1000 trees per acre). Under this type of arrangement, we allow the sponsor to manage their property in the future as they see fit. Although this option is not suitable for most donors, it is appropriate for some people who live on rural properties in Atlantic Canada, where a donor wants to turn abandoned pasture land into vibrant forests for their children and grandchildren. Please email us if you'd like to discuss this type of project.

Do you claim carbon credits on your projects?

No. However, some of our major sponsoring partners probably do.

What are your long-term goals?

By the end of 2025, we expect that we will have completed projects on at least fifty sites in eight Canadian provinces. We already have three demonstration forest projects that each average over 100 acres in size. We would also like to build a small greenhouse operation in 2026 that would allow us to increase the percentage of deciduous seedlings used in our projects. Diverse forests are healthy forests.

Do you have jobs available?

At the moment, all of our planting is done by members of our management team and by professional planters whom we recruit from our commercial work in western Canada. As our volumes grow in the future, we may reach out for additional assistance. A large number of experienced professional tree planters have already contacted us to offer their skills, even though we are not currently soliciting applications.

How can I help?

The biggest thing that any one individual can do to help us is to spread the word about our organization. Tell people about us, and share our website link! Sharing our blog posts and story is the best possible support that you can provide. If you'd like to take it a step further and make a small donation to help plant more trees, we'd certainly appreciate that too. We won't make any puns about grassroots success, but it's amazing how much work can be done when a large number of people help out with small donations.