Richard St. Barbe Baker

Richard St. Barbe Baker – Men of the Trees Society – Kenya, Africa

Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889-1982) is the First Global Conservationist as he founded the Men of the Trees Society in 1922 in Kenya. Now based in the UK, this organization is still active today as the International Tree Foundation, whose many chapters carry out reforestation internationally (over 100 countries). Over the course of his great works, Richard had international impact, and he is the person who inspired Michael Pilarski to start Friends of the Trees Society in 1978. By some estimates, organizations he founded or assisted have been responsible for planting at least 26 trillion trees, internationally.

“Long before the science of climate change was understood, he had warned of the impact of forest loss on climate,” writes Britain’s Prince Charles, in the foreword of the new biography about St. Barbe. “He raised the alarm and prescribed a solution: one third of every nation should be tree covered. He practiced permaculture and agro-ecology in Nigeria before those terms existed and was among the founding figures of organic farming in England.”

As a very young child he was attracted to gardening and, since the family’s Beacon Hill home was surrounded by a wood, he began to explore the forest at a fairly early age. He became very adept at manual work and harbored a lifelong belief in its value.  Working for a short while as a logger in the Prince Albert Lumber Camps he became convinced that the wanton waste of timber and agricultural practices (including the razing of the natural scrub trees) by European settlers were leading to deplorable soil degradation and potential aridity on Canada’s prairies.

St. Barbe Baker soon resumed studies at Cambridge in biology, botany. He had realized through observation that deforestation, resulting from the removal of trees without sufficient reforestation, results in soil-loss problems, declines in habitat and biodiversity, declines in availability of wood for fuel and industrial use, and reduction in quality of life. He attended the First World Forestry Congress in Rome and then went on to work in Palestine and set up a chapter of the Men of the Trees there. In the US, he became involved in the Save the Redwoods campaign. n the late 1930s he worked with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the American Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), said eventually to involve some six million youths.

In North Africa he saw the effects of centuries of land mismanagement, first from wheat farming in the later days of the Roman Empire and after that from the grazing of goats first introduced by Arabs. Immediately concerned with these deforestation problems, in 1922 he set up a tree nursery and founded an organization with Kenya’s Kikuyu people to carry out managed reforestation in the region, organization native species. In the regional dialect, the local society was called “Watu wa Miti”. This formed the foundation stone for what was to become an international organization, the Men of the Trees. 

Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven. And learn tranquility. If a man loses one-third of his skin he dies; if a tree loses one-third of its bark, it too dies.

Website: http://themanofthetrees.com 

Video: Man of the Trees – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51O-pe2AQt4