The REPLANT Act, which was introduced in July 2020, provides money for the US Forest Service to plant more than a billion trees in the next nine years.

The World Economic Forum also aims to help plant a trillion trees around the world by 2030 in an effort to soak up some of the excess carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.

But a University of Vermont (UVM) study has found that US tree nurseries don’t grow nearly enough trees or have the species diversity needed to meet the ambitious plans.

“Trees are this amazing natural solution to a lot of our challenges, including climate change. We urgently need to plant many millions of them,” said UVM scientist Tony D’Amato, who co-led the new research. “But what this paper points out is that we are woefully underserved by any kind of regional or national scale inventory of seedlings to get the job done.”

The team studied 605 plant nurseries across 20 northern states. Only 56 of these grow and sell seedlings...