Every year, this retired B.C. teacher transforms into The Lorax to teach kids about caring for Earth

For the past 12 years, retired teacher and principal Kim Fulton, 74, has dressed as the infamous Dr. Seuss character, The Lorax, to teach students in the northern Okanagan town of Spallumcheen, B.C., about the environment.

Every year on Earth Day, Fulton says he helps hand out free seedling trees to students to teach them the importance of caring for nature. 

"I haven't counted, but I'm going to say [I've helped plant] 30,000 trees [in the last 20 years]," he told Radio West host Sarah Penton.

Fulton says his project, Tress For Hope, helps educate about climate change and advocate for a better future.

He adds the project takes inspiration from a line in The Lorax: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to be better."

Dressed in his Lorax costume, Fulton joined CBC Radio for an interview to share his message for Earth Day. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why do you dress up like The Lorax?

My costume is supposed to look like The Lorax on the book. I've got this big Lanny McDonald mustache, which is supposed to have little spindles that stand up to look like Lorax hair. I've got an orange jumpsuit with lichen glued onto it and knots of a tree and bark drawn on with a felt pen. Yesterday the school I was at said I looked like an escape convict.

Well, the whole story, The Lorax, has several themes in it. One of which is we tend to overconsume things that we don't need. So in the story, the Once-ler sets up a factory and starts producing thneeds. To produce a thneed, you have to cut down a Truffula tree.

So they start off slow, and in typical Dr. Seuss fashion, they make these beautiful machines that can hack down six or eight trees at a time. Contrary to what The Lorax said, these thneeds, which he said no one would need, sell like crazy. 

One of the morals of the story is to plant a new Truffula and treat it with care. Feed it fresh water and give it clean air. That's what I'm hoping kids will do with our project that we're involved in.

How does the project work?

Now we have 7,600 conifer seedling trees that we'll be giving out to kids to plant tomorrow and some are going out next week for kids to plant. We're calling it Trees For Hope. It's my deep feeling that right now a lot of us are feeling unhelpful and discouraged about the future and kids in particular.

It's hard to avoid the signals Mother Nature is giving us with floods and droughts and hurricanes and unfortunately with wars.

So planting a tree gives a feeling of hope and it's kind of a metaphor for the future: treating [the tree] with care and [see] how it's going to grow and become an oxygen producer, an air cleaner and a flood preventer. The fibrous nature of roots tends to hold water back instead of running off like it does on roads and roofs.

So planting a tree is a feel-good thing and in the 25 to 30 years of doing this with kids, I've never had a kid not feel good about planting a tree.

What tips do you have to be more environmentally conscious? 

When I started off with this [project], I used to be worried about all the animals and plants in the earth and wanting to create more habitat. But what I've come to realize is that all this work I'm doing is to save the human race. Namely, my children and grandchildren.

As we saw in the pandemic, when we laid off for a while, Mother Nature can heal. We talk about getting back to normal. But, I would suggest we don't really need to get back to normal. I think we need a new normal. 

None of us is perfect and these changes take time. Personally, I can't go out and buy an electric car. But I can do other things. I can cut down on silly stuff that I consume or I can look for things that are built to last. I can turn the heat down in my home. 

What's the message you want young people to know?

Well, it speaks to me that we need to take action and kids in particular. But all of us need to take action and quit ignoring that we're having problems on the planet. So unless someone like us does something, nothing's going to get better. It's not.