PICTOU – The Town of Pictou is restoring its woodlands hit hard by post-tropical storm Fiona in 2022. The town announced Sept. 3 that Pictou’s Fitness Trails and woodlands will be replanted with 75,000 native seedlings. It said in a news release that the project was fully funded with the trees and shrubs coming through the Thriving Forests Program. The program is a provincial tree-planting and ecosystem restoration initiative led by the Clean Foundation in partnership with the provincial and federal governments. Thriving Forests is aiding the province’s goal to plant up to 21 million trees by 2031 on private and public lands, which was first announced by the federal and provincial governments in August 2024, with funding from the federal government’s 2 Billion Trees program.