Ecosia marks Earth Day milestone with 250 million trees planted worldwide
Berlin: Ecosia, the nonprofit search engine, has reached a major environmental milestone just before Earth Day, celebrating 250 million trees planted worldwide. The achievement makes it the world’s largest planter of native trees.
Founded in 2009, Ecosia has built a global network of more than 200,000 local tree planters and 125 partner organizations. User clicks and searches generate ad revenue, which the company uses to fund reforestation.
These partnerships focus on planting native species with local experts. To date, Ecosia has planted 1,600 native tree species, including 144 endangered or vulnerable ones. The company is now a leading contributor to threatened-tree conservation, helping restore biodiversity hotspots and ecosystems for future generations.
To mark the 250 million milestone, founder Christian Kroll planted a tree with Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment in front of the Reichstag, Germany’s federal parliament in Berlin, where Ecosia is headquartered.
“All of our successes have come from this powerful on-the-ground movement,” said Kroll. “From one click in 2009 to 250 million trees today, our global community supercharged our climate action.”Ecosia often targets countries with high biodiversity, where tree loss directly drives species loss. Projects have launched in Nicaragua and Peru, Burkina Faso and Malawi, and Indonesia and Australia.
In 2018, the company created a tree nursery for 200,000 trees in Madagascar to help build a forest corridor from an isolated habitat to the ocean. In 2019, it started a forest agriculture project in Borneo to prevent land sales for oil palm development.
