Cycling for trees

Few can deny the obvious benefits to bicycling. It’s good for health, roads, and certainly trees.

But soon, coming to Banks, is a bicycle tour that takes support for trees to new heights.

Organizers say this year’s Tour des Trees will draw more than 100 cyclists from around the country to embark on a weeklong, 585-mile cycling tour across Oregon.

The point: to raise money for tree research. Specifically, how trees can better thrive while living in increasingly polluted environments.

“We need the research to keep up with the challenge that an urban tree faces,” said Mary DiCarlo, with the aptly named Tree Research and Education Endowment Fund, or TREE Fund.

After all, DiCarlo added, “people can’t survive without trees."

The Tour starts Sunday morning, and begins with more than 100 cyclists, from across the country, meeting in Banks’ Greenville City Park to plant 20 new trees -- one tree for each year of the Tour’s history.

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