The California Conservation Project, which was unofficially renamed by the public as “the tree people,” rallies multiple groups to prepare 10,000 trees for planting during the week of Arbor Day. The California Conservation Project rallies the California Division of Forestry, California Air National Guide, U.S Forest Service, Los Angeles Urban Forest Council, L.A. Bicentennial Committee, Southern California Edison, Camp JCA, and numerous civic groups and schools to prepare 10,000 trees for planting during the week of Arbor Day. The public unofficially renames the California Conservation Project “the tree people.”

In April, the article, “Andy vs. the Bureaucratic Deadwood,” appears in the Los Angeles Times with a public request for four thousand dollars to fund a summer tree planting of 8,000 trees in the San Bernardino National Forest. $10,000 is raised. The California Conservation Project, the predecessor to TreePeople, is incorporated.

At a summer camp in the San Bernardino Mountains, 15-year-old camp counselor, Andy Lipkis, learns that air pollution from the city was killing Southern California’s forests. The US Forest Service rangers share with the campers that the trees were dying so quickly there would possibly be no forest remaining by the year 2000—unless someone replanted the forest with smog resistant trees. Lipkis decides it was up to kids like him and his fellow campers to take action and save the forest.