A local non-profit won’t let the pandemic stop its work to protect the environment on Earth Day.

Living Lands and Waters surpasses its goal for planting trees this year.

Rachel Loomis is the Education Coordinator at Living Lands and Waters and says she still remembers the first time she planted trees with her parents in Wisconsin.

“We probably planted around 400 trees so kinda makes a circle back to what we’re doing here,” said Loomis.

Leah Cafarelli is the marketing manager and program coordinator and said their goal is to preserve and protect the natural environment.

“We are distributing over 165,000 trees across 27 states where as normally like last year we distributed 100,000 or just over 100,000 trees so it’s a really big year for us,” said Cafarelli.

Loomis along with other members have been working to accomplish that goal.

“Making sure that those trees are getting out to 100 of people all over the country and just making sure that they get all those trees so they can plant them,” said Loomis.

At first they were worried because of the Coronavirus but they were able to make it work.

“Taking the tree sampling to their houses so that they could still work from home while wrapping trees then bringing them back here,” said Cafarelli.

Loomis hopes that when people get their trees it’ll be something meaningful to them.

“Receiving a tree means there’s a new season of life coming right, so a tree can mean a lot of things to many people,” said Loomis.

The goal is to reach the 2 million tree goal within the next few years.