MANHEIM, Pa. (WHTM) – They’re all over the place, but there can never be enough. More than 12,000 trees were distributed to agencies in Lancaster County on Tuesday.

“The benefits of trees are never ending,” Julia Krall with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said.

The tens of thousands of trees derive from nurseries in Kirkwood in southern Lancaster County and northern Maryland. It’s an initiative for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation – the Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership.

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“We come out and distribute trees to over 300 partners that we have throughout the state of Pennsylvania,” Krall said.

Grant money let’s partner agencies to get trees at no cost. Over 40 species were unloaded from three trucks.

“You tend to see on farms that trees get taken down,” Tyler Keefer with Lancaster County’s Conservation District said. “So when we’re on there, we’re always trying to line the streams with trees because that’s what helps shade it out. Shade makes cooler water. Cooler water makes healthier fish.”

Cooler water allows for more oxygen in the water says Keefer. Better temperatures aren’t the only benefit for fish.

“Something that we always tell people is that fish grow on trees,” Keefer said. “Where you have trees, you have leaves falling into the water. Where you have leaves in the water, you have macro invertebrates that are able to eat the stream bugs and the stream bugs feed fish and things like that.”

These trees will have an impact on the Chesapeake Bay according to Marley McKind with the Foundation.

“They’re preventing all that runoff from entering waterways, bays, and then also they sequester water in the ground,” McKind said. “That can help us in future years.”

Around 20 volunteers helped sort the trees by final destination with planting season in play before winter.

“We’re not saving the bay one email at a time,” Krall said. “We are definitely doing it with the trees that we give out and get out to the community.”

The goal is to plant 10 million new native trees across Pennsylvania. Nearly 6 million have already been planted.

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