Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Acting Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn Thursday announced DCNR and TreeVitalize will be assisting with a large tree planting effort on April 18-19 at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Somerset County.

“In addition to their many environmental benefits, trees are a symbol of life and growth, which is so important at a site that requires reflection on the brave sacrifice made by the 40 passengers and crew of Flight 93,” Dunn said.

DCNR will join the National Park Service, many partner agencies and hundreds of volunteers as they plant more than 22,000 seedlings at the site.  DCNR’s Bureau of Forestry is donating 10,700 seedlings grown at the department’s Penn Nursery in Centre County.

Six DCNR foresters will be on site during the two days acting as team leaders and providing information on how to plant seedlings.

Construction is ongoing at the Flight 93 National Memorial, which marks the spot where the plane went down in a field near Shanksville after the crew and passengers thwarted a plan by terrorists to crash in to the U.S. Capitol.

This planting represents a continuation of the partnership that began in 2009 between DCNR and the National Park Service at the Flight 93 site.

Since 2012 the DCNR Bureau of Forestry’s nursery has supplied thousands of seedlings to help reforest the strip mined land surrounding the crash site, and DCNR foresters have led volunteers in planting the seedlings each spring.

TreeVitalize is a public-private partnership to help restore tree cover, educate citizens about planting trees as an act of caring for our environment, and build capacity among local governments to understand, protect and restore their urban trees.

NewsClips:

Volunteers To Plant 22,000 Trees At Flight 93 Memorial

Hundreds Planting 22,000 Trees At Flight 93 Memorial

4/20/2015