Tale of Three Shelterbelts

In response to "Dust Bowl" conditions in the great Plains, from Texas and North Dakota, during the early 1930's, the cooperative Prairie States Forestry (Shelterbelt) Project was begun. this unique windbreak project, an idea of President Franklin Roosevelt, began in 1934. In March 1935, the first trees were planted
on a farm in Mangum, Oklahoma.  The project involved extensive cooperation between the USDA Soil Conservation Service (now Natural Resources Conservation Service); various State, county, local agencies, and hundreds of farmers.legions of Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief workers, many of whom were unemployed farmers, accomplished the work. In the spring of 1938, they planted approximately 52,000 cottonwood trees in one severely sand-blown area south of Neligh, Nebraska. (www.foresthistory.org)

In the north-west, north and north-east of China, starting in 1978, row of trees designed to protect Beijing from sandstorms with a goal to last for 73 years, cover an area of 4.069 million square kilometers (42.4% of China’s total territory) to surpass Roosevelt’s Great Plains Shelterbelt and Stalin’s Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature. The ambitious “Three North Shelterbelt Project" is by far the world's largest tree-plant project. This was to be China’s “Green Great Wall”.