Across the world, 177,000 square kilometres of forests and natural vegetation is cleared each year, equivalent to 50 football fields every minute, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
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Australia is considered one of 11 deforestation fronts facing significant environmental threat from deforestation.
Ballarat educator and sustainability advocate Colleen Filippa is working to raise awareness of the importance of trees and to boost community planting efforts through her social enterprise Fifteen Trees.
She launched a new crowdfunding campaign on Friday to mark World Environment Day in a quest to help endangered Black Cockatoos in Western Australia.
In the last 50 years worldwide we have lost 50 per cent of our rainforests and we just can't keep going at that rate. It is crazy.
- Colleen Filippa, Fifteen Trees
The campaign encourages donations to purchase 500 eucalyptus trees for planting by the Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Conservation Centre.
Carnaby's, Baudin's and Forest Red Tail Black Cockatoos are only found in the south west of WA and are threatened with extinction due to loss of habitat through land clearing.
Ms Filippa said Fifteen Trees had supported Karakin Black Cockatoo Conservation Centre for a number of years, but she wanted to ramp up efforts to help the centre achieve its plan to re-vegetate two hectares of land with 2000 trees.
She said it took 20 years for the trees to be mature enough to provide nuts for the birds to feed on, meaning it was crucial planting was undertaken now to ensure food supplies for the future.
Fifteen Trees has helped community groups, schools and Landcare groups across Australia plant more than 182,000 trees since it began 10 years ago.
Corporates and individuals are encouraged to purchase trees for planting to reduce their carbon footprint.
Planting 15 trees reduces the carbon emissions of using a vehicle for 12 months, one tree per hour in the air reduces the carbon emissions of a flight, and one tree per guest at a birthday, wedding or conference can reduce the carbon emissions of an event.
Ms Fillippa said she founded the company after spending 25 years as a high school biology teacher and realising through her involvement in Landcare how hard volunteers worked to plant but also raise funds to purchase trees.
"I thought maybe I could be that person who gives a prod to companies and individuals to purchase trees for the Landcare groups and community groups to plant," she said.
Ms Filippa continues to lecture at Australian Catholic University on science and sustainability one day a week and educates on the importance of trees and sustainability through Fifteen Trees during talks at schools and tree planting days with companies.
She said her passion for the environment developed from time growing up in the bushland or by the creeks near her home in Bendigo or holidays camping or to the beach.
Ms Filippa said she loved taking groups out to experience the joy of being in nature and planting trees.
"The people planting quite often tell me they did it once in primary school, or they flick back to the early memories in kindergarten and it triggers early memories of tree climbing," she said.
While planting takes place across Australia, a number of sites have been planted in and around Ballarat, including at Sovereign Hill's Narmbool property and in the Leigh Catchment area past Buninyong.
Ms Filippa said Fifteen Trees was doing its best to facilitate the planting of as many new trees as possible, but she was deeply concerned about the loss of Australia's native forests.
"There are so many battles, at the Tarkine in Tasmania, at Gippsland, New South Wales and in WA," she said.
"We are logging and losing so many of our big trees we will never be able to replace them. They are 500, 600 years old.
"We even have it happening at Ararat with the VicRoads bypass.
"I feel as though we are doing something (with Fifteen Trees), but I do despair for the big native forests.
"In the last 50 years worldwide we have lost 50 per cent of our rainforests and we just can't keep going at that rate. It is crazy."
Ms Filippa said her aim for the future of Fifteen Trees was to be able to meet all requests for trees made by community groups and that would mean getting more supporters on board.
"We knock back maybe half of the groups that ask us for trees because we just don't have that funding coming in to be able to say yes," she said.
Ms Filippa encourages people to get out and enjoy the environment as much as they can, to take responsibility for common areas by picking up rubbish or joining their local 'Friends Of' group and thinking about how they can support groups and projects beyond their local area, like in Gippsland, WA, Tasmania and overseas.
"If you haven't got the time, chip in some money to help their good work. Because in numbers, we are so powerful," she said.
You can donate to the Black Cockatoos of WA crowdfunding campaign through Pozible: pozible.com/project/black-cockatoos-of-wa.
The campaign will run until the end of June.
Visit 15trees.com.au/ for more information about Fifteen Trees and to support tree planting in Australia.
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