4 URBAN FORESTRY

Submitted by Jeremy on July 13, 2009 - 10:40pm
  • Expand the Urban Forestry Program with expert staff, to help citizens better care for their trees and protect them from the stress of climate change, i.e., from insects and disease.
  •  Give more resources to the Urban Forestry Division for educational outreach programs. Develop curricula to teach children and adults the many benefits of trees.
  •  Increase City and County tree planting budgets, including grants to nonprofits.  
  • Require developers to retain and plant more trees.  Explore more stringent rules against homeowners’ removing trees; set up provisions to swap a tree removed for one planted.
  • Convert some streets to forest corridors from automobile corridors.  Reclaim streets to make more room for trees, bikes and pedestrians.
  •  Plant fruit and nut trees, both sequestering carbon and producing local food. Eliminate prohibition against planting them on parking strips.  Identify existing fruit and nut trees in the City/County and work with gleaning groups to create a database of their locations.
  • Introduce some urban predators to help reduce squirrels’ harvesting of nuts in the city, possibly developing habitat for predator raptors around nut tree concentrations.
  • Create value by growing food for the Food Bank.  Develop some parks as food forests.
  • Fund and support research into effects on present forest of climate change.
  • Convert public tree stands from short-lived or susceptible trees to longer-lived and more resistant varieties.  Develop denser plantings and promote uneven age tree management.
  • Explore the idea that trees should have rights.
  • Have schools adopt and care for trees in their neighborhood.  Create a Special Trees Program, with some designation or sign that anyone can use to say “this tree is special.”
  • The City/County/Metro should expedite the development and use of the LIDAR inventory to determine solar potential.  LIDAR will allow assessment of areas’ solar potential by measuring the tree canopy and tree height around homes and buildings.  Where trees must be sacrificed to improve solar gain, replacements should be planted.