Planting diverse forests, not monoculture plantations, is key to restoring biodiversity and climate resilience

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:45:00 +0200

Around the world, governments and organizations are planning to plant more than 1 trillion trees this decade to slow climate change and reduce biodiversity loss. Yet, many of these efforts rely on monoculture plantations—large areas planted with only a single tree species—whose trees often die or grow into biologically simplified, fragile systems with little ecological value. The United Nations’ Decade on Ecosystem Restoration has made tree planting central to global restoration, but many commitments still count these low‑biodiversity plantations toward their climate and biodiversity goals.
Scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have run a large‑scale experiment called BiodiversiTREE, in which they planted nearly 18,000 seedlings of 16 native species across 60 acres and compared monoculture plots with mixed‑species plots. Over roughly 13 years, mixed‑species forests grew up to 80 percent larger than their monoculture counterparts, supported denser canopies, hoste