But while there’s a huge focus on planting trees, there’s little on where those seedlings will come from. A study published in February in Frontiers in Forest and Global Change, authored by 17 environmental scientists, including ones from the Nature Conservancy, the USDA Forest Service, American Forests, and academic institutions, outlines that we are already short more than 2 billion seedlings per year—and that’s just to get halfway to meeting the reforesting potential of the lower 48 states. They estimated that there are 133 million acres to reforest by the year 2040, which would require 34 billion seedlings. According to the study, the US currently produces about 1.3 billion seedlings a year, which means a 2.4-fold increase is needed.