Horizon Guides has launched a Trees For Trips charity partnership to plant 50 trees in Kenya for every trip booked through its website.
The travel guides and trip planning site, which has a referral service for tour operators, has joined forces with an international charity International Tree Foundation (ITF).
It planted 200 trees last week as part of the reforestation projects it is supporting in Kenya, which it hopes will improve livelihoods for 50,000 rural households.
Sheffield-based Horizon Guides says each tree planted will save around 4kg of carbon each year and help the country meet its Paris Climate Summit targets.
The company writes niche travel guides to help promote independent tour operators’ tours that do not focus on mass tourism.
Founder Matthew Barker said: “We in the travel industry depend on the natural world for our success, yet too many travel companies profit from mother nature without ever giving anything back.
“We believe that if the travel industry is going to benefit from the natural world, it should be leading the fight for its conservation and restoration. Planting trees doesn’t offset or neutralise the impact of tourism but it does allow our readers a meaningful way to give something back to mother nature.”
Kenya has tree cover of around 7%, which equates to 67 trees per person compared to the global average of 420. ITF’s ‘20 Million Trees for Kenya’s Forests’ campaign seeks to restore the forests in partnership with community organisations and corporate donors, such as Horizon Guides.
Trees will be grown from seed in community tree nurseries and then planted during Kenya’s rainy seasons in April and November.
Andy Egan, chief executive of ITF, said: “International Tree Foundation is delighted to form a new partnership with Horizon Guides to support our 20 Million Trees for Kenya’s Forests campaign. We hope that this will lead to thousands of trees being planted by local communities with the support of Horizon Guides’ customers.”