Cities have paved over most of their historical wildlife habitat. Traffic congestion pollutes the air, demand for lights and air-conditioning drains energy, and too much water is wasted as runoff. All in all, cities could be grim places to live and work, were it not for trees.
Their leaves absorb pollution and help to cleanse the air. Their branches reach out with welcome shade, a natural cooler that cuts energy consumption and lowers consumer costs. When it rains, trees collect moisture that recharges the groundwater. Their roots hold the soil together, keep the ground moist, and prevent erosion. Birds and wildlife seek food and shelter among the boughs, and people take pleasure in their aesthetic qualities.
"People have always had
- Ray Tretheway,
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Trees raise property values and provide a sense of neighborhood and community. They also play a critical role in the way watersheds and ecosystems handle wildfire, an annual occurrence confronting many California cities.
"We are beginning to see a major shift from people appreciating trees simply for their beauty and shade to realizing that trees are really working for us by improving air quality, saving energy, and helping protect against skin cancer," said Ray Tretheway, executive director of the Sacramento Tree Foundation, which fosters the planting of 60,000 trees a year.
"People have always had a passion for trees. But when they find out how much more a tree does than beautification alone, their passion changes to a commitment to help us do our work," Tretheway said.
The foundation is partnered with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) in a shade-tree summer cooling program that has planted 150,000 trees in three years. The foundation, SMUD, and others also are helping to save some 30,000 elms from the deadly Dutch elm disease and a curable elm leaf beetle infestation.
"There is a great potential that isn't being met," Lipkis said. "If every parcel of land were treated as part of a watershed, we could get a handle on the problems."
TreePeople wants Los Angeles County to deal with flood control problems in the concrete-lined Los Angeles River channel by applying integrated watershed management strategies instead of pouring more concrete. Lipkis says it would be good for the economy as well as the environment.
"Pouring concrete provides a few short-term jobs, but managing the watershed as an ecosystem could create many long-term jobs, and also improve the environment," he said.
The National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council (NUCFAC), a U.S. Forest Service advisory panel, awarded $150,000 to TreePeople to help launch a program to demonstrate that managing urban areas as functional watersheds is economical.
"We made the case for saving money, creating jobs, and cleaning up the water, which all adds up to improving the environment," Lipkis said.
"People are beginning to realize the importance of oak woodlands in sustaining the state's biodiversity," said Janet Cobb, president of the California Oak Foundation, which protects native oak woodlands and supports a statewide grassroots effort to encourage planting and conserving existing habitat. "That's why we have changed the focus of our efforts from preserving single trees to entire woodlands."
A network of organizations advise and assist the CDF in various ways. California ReLeaf, a nonprofit organization under contract to the CDF, coordinates volunteer efforts in urban and community forestry. The California Urban Forestry Advisory Council (CUFAC), a cross section of government, private industry, nonprofits, utilities, tree nurseries, landscape businesses, and others with an interest in urban tree growth, advises the CDF in community forestry needs. The Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committee advises small landowners how to improve, protect, or preserve non-industrial forest land. CDF also is promoting the formation of "tree boards" comprised of civic leaders and urban forestry interests to advise local governments or set policies affecting trees in the community.
"If trees are integrated properly into the cities and rural areas, the forests around our homes and businesses, along freeways, parking lots and other areas become healthy green infrastructure," Wilson said.
Managing urban forests as part of an ecosystem also reduces the threat of fire, a seasonal certainty in California.
"Three-quarters of the state is a fire problem," Wilson said. "It is not a question of whether it will burn; it's only a question of when."
As more people move away from big cities and onto forests and wildlands, they transform once-pristine regions into suburban forests, and the old distinctions between traditional forestry and urban forestry begin to disappear.
Fire must be suppressed to protect lives and property. But quelling every conflagration, while essential to public safety, interferes with fire's natural role as a cleansing agent to rid the forest of diseased, dead, and dying trees and brush.
When fire eventually strikes, it will burn hotter, faster, and more destructively than so-called cool fires that occur in thinner, healthier forests.
A Fire Strategy Team of federal, state, and local community representatives is preparing a plan to reduce dangerously thick vegetation in forests and wildlands with prescribed burning or removal as biomass, which can be recycled as mulch or used to generate electricity. The team, chaired by Wilson and Regional Forester Lynn Sprague of the U.S. Forest Service, is working on identifying and mapping communities that face critical fire risk, and enlisting assistance of local resource conservation districts in developing community efforts to reduce fire fuel.
"We need to be aggressive and act fast to clean out dead and dying trees around people's homes so they will not be vulnerable to this danger," said Terry Gorton, assistant resources secretary for forestry and rural economic development.
"Fire districts are enforcing the requirements to create defensible space around single family homes. But a consistent comment of those who must clean up their lots is that large undeveloped public and private landholdings are littered with dead trees," said Chief Duane Whitelaw of the North Tahoe Fire Protection District. "Everybody needs to participate, so we are all going in the same direction."
"We're building the first-of-its-kind statewide electronic system that will enable communities and urban forestry interests in California and other states to share information, and even come on-line with wildlife professionals," said Eric Oldar, the CDF's state coordinator for Urban and Community Forestry. Oldar's electronic address is eric_oldar@fire.ca.gov. He also can be contacted at the CDF in Riverside, 909-782-4140, Ext. 6125.
