Arbor Day

Some of the articles about Earth Day (4/22/25, usually acknowledged the weekend before or after) focused on acts people can take to make a difference.  

One is planting trees.  Many Earth Day events are organized around tree planting events organized by local and state tree advocacy groups.  

Such groups may be necessary in the face of municipal budget cuts ("LA’s Tree Emergency Goes Beyond Vandalism," Planetizen) and failures by agencies ("Salt Lake City’s Public Lands Department accidentally poisons 200 trees," Salt Lake Tribune) and misguided legislators ("Are trees ‘the enemy?’ Some Utah lawmakers claim overgrown forests suck too much water," SLT).

Arbor Day is held the last Friday in April, as a way to focus on the place and role of trees in our communities.

-- last year's entry, "Arbor Day: Street Trees of Seattle by Taha Ebrahimi | Trees as Cultural Landscape (at the community scale)"

1. Cities and/or neighborhoods as community forests ( Interactive map of many US cities, "Which cities have the most trees? See how yours stacks up," Washington Post).  For years I've suggested that cities, and more recently, maybe neighborhoods, should think of their tree cover as an urban or community arboretum.  

Morton Arboretum in Illinois runs the Arbnet accreditation program, and a few smaller cities have this certification.  DK about any neighborhoods.

Also see "A sequoia forest in Detroit? Plantings to improve air quality and mark Earth Day," AP.

Arborists are turning vacant land on Detroit’s eastside into a small urban forest, not of elms, oaks and red maples indigenous to the city but giant sequoias, the world’s largest trees that can live for thousands of years. .

The project on four lots will not only replace long-standing blight with majestic trees, but could also improve air quality and help preserve the trees that are native to California’s Sierra Nevada, where they are threatened by ever-hotter wildfire.

Detroit is the pilot city

for the Giant Sequoia Filter Forest. The nonprofit Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has donated dozens of sequoia saplings that were planted Tuesday by staff and volunteers from Arboretum Detroit, another nonprofit, to mark Earth Day

TreeCity USA is another Arbor Day Foundation program rewarding cities for their commitment to urban forestry.

Relatedly, while seeing only limited use, SF has an "Green Benefits District," which is a special tax increment financing mechanism that can be used to maintain and improve public spaces.  One is active in the Dogpatch-NW Portrero neighborhood.

Cass Avenue, Mt. Clemens Michigan.

2.  An alternate way to think about local government planning and the role of trees, is treating Streets as linear parks, framed by trees ("Linear parks: Adding value to urban landscape," Question of Cities).  

Before the dominance of the car, streets were treated more as landscapes with plantings, rather than utilitarian spaces.

Similarly, a "parkway" is more about the landscape than a freeway.

3.  Green bonds as a funding source. Likely to dry up during the Trump Administration, this Philadelphia Inquirer article is about the best explanation of how they work, "Longwood Gardens’ $250 million renovation taps increasingly popular ‘green’ bonds."

4.  Fruit trees in the public space.  Not just pretty but a source of food.  But they are messy.  Salt Lake's Green Urban Lunch Box, which has a focus on fruit trees as part of urban food systems, put itself on hiatus because of funding unpredictability.

Sugar maple trees are a source of maple syrup ("Rhode Island Couple Tapping Trees for Syrup," FUN107). 

5. Tree vandalism.  "Vandals chainsaw dozens of trees across downtown L.A.," Los Angeles Times and "Homeless Couple Destroys Young Trees At SF’s Jefferson Square Park," Beyond Chron.  WTF?  The cost of lost trees can be considerable.

A woman walks around a felled tree along South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday. (Photos: Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

L.A.’s fragile urban canopy was dealt a vicious blow this weekend when a chainsaw-wielding vandal cut down a number of shade trees along South Grand Avenue and other areas of downtown, according to media posts and photos uploaded to Reddit and Instagram. 

-- "Chain-saw-wielding man suspected of felling downtown L.A. trees is arrested," LAT 

6.  Rich people unauthorized cutting of trees to improve the viewshed from their home is a common problem ("Southbury couple says they will pay $600,000 judgement for illegally removing town-owned trees," CT Insider). And developers ("Fort Worth council ‘speaks for the trees’ with tougher fines for clear cutting," Fort Worth Star-Telegram).

Not everyone agrees ("Do cedar trees have more rights than homeowners? Texas lawmakers pushes new bills to remove protections," KXAN/Austin).

Texas lawmakers are taking on cedar allergies during the 89th Legislative Session. Two bills, House Bill 3798 and Senate Bill 1927, aim to prevent a city from prohibiting the removal of an Ashe Juniper tree.

“It’s these liberal urban communities, like the city of Austin, who are trying to put cedar trees over private property rights and over protecting native flora and fauna,” said State Rep. Ellen Troxclair, R-Burnet County.

Also see, about examples in England ("Felled giants expose gaps in tree protection," Guardian).

We should have a system of protection like Toronto, Canada, where virtually all trees, public and private, are automatically protected and any felling requires a licence to be obtained. Where felling is permitted, the bylaws also require new trees to be planted and there are penalties of up to C$100,000 (£54,000) if you contravene the law.

7.  Trees as woke.  The Trump Administration sees planting trees as a verboten DEI initiative (Milwaukee church saw opportunity to plant trees on empty land. Trump team saw DEI effort," USA Today).  Also, grant rescissions by the Trump Administration affect grants to states by the US Forest Service.  The grant was for increasing biodiversity of the tree cover.

8.  With climate change invasive non-native trees are an increasing problem ("Nonnative tree invaders lead to declines in native tree species richness," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.).  Also see "Column: Death to the Bradford pear tree," Daily Tar Heel.

9.  As mentioned in the Earth Day entry.  The Trump Administration intends to Increase cutting of trees in US Forest Service lands ("USDA Opens 59% of Federal Forest for Logging to Manage Fire Risk," Bloomberg).  Plus defunding the agency  and cutting science projects.  Given the increase in the geographic spread and virulence of wildfire, the cuts extend to personnel who respond to wildfires ("‘Crazy’: Forest Service cuts ignite fear, fury over wildfire risks," Politico).  

The Ocean County wildfire covered 8,500 acres and led to about 3,000 residents being evacuated, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. Photo: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

Wildfires in states are an increasing problem ("N.J. wildfire swells to 11,500 acres, could become biggest in two decades," Philadelphia Inquirer).

10.  Revival of wood as a building material in taller buildings ("How wood is making a comeback in construction," U of Utah).

Ascent Tower in Milwaukee is the tallest timber constructed building in the US.

Although there is a "sweet spot" or limit on when it makes sense to use wood and when not to ("Building tall with timber "does not make sense" say experts," Dezeen).