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Re: TH: Re: Usenet Newsgroup
Post-To: Tree-House@Majordomo.Flora.Com (Community Forestry) ----------
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RT Ellsberry wrote:
>
> Here in Baltimore, urban forestry is organized something like this:
> Parks & Rec / City Forestry / Street Trees. This structure is nicely
> encapsulated in 'rec.parks.trees' ...
>
Here in Los Angeles Community Forestry is a lot more complex. The Department
of Rec & Park's efforts in community forestry comprise only a small fraction of
our urban forestry efforts. The rec.parks title would probably miss most of our
citizens if they were searching the net for a community forestry newsgroup. I
don't know the usenet world very well, so I donšt have any intelligent suggestions
for a better title. I will probably miss a lot of players, but herešs a good overview
of the human side of our urban forest.
The City of LA uses distinctly different management strategies for park trees
and street trees (completely different departments with different goals and
different priorities.) The City Council has a subcommittee (the Community
Forestry Advisory Council) sequestered over in Public Works, and in another
building there is an Environmental Affairs Division. Engineering, Street
Lighting, the Department of Water and Power also all have their fingers in the
Urban Forest management pie. In addition there is LAUSD (the largest property
owner in the city), which has it's own tree crews. There are two major non-profit
youth employment tree planting efforts, a large non-profit citizen forestry
program, some interesting hybrids and a host of neighborhood level tree
planting/care programs. The USDA Forest Service has an Urban Forestry
Program (Greenlink) and does research on the urban forest (separate division
again). The US Natural Resources Conservation Service has established an
Urban Team in LA to support greening efforts with expertise. The University of
California in Riverside, and Los Angeles have both done research on urban
forests. From a policy standpoint, the Southern California Air Quality
Management District has a strong voice on urban forest management. California
Statešs Department of Forestry has a couple of urban foresteršs who serve as
experts, and administer a large tree planting grant program. The County of Los
Angeles, which for the most part stays out of the City of LA, also has a large
grant program that has planted a lot of trees in the city. Caltrans has a huge
CO2 mitigation grant program to plant trees. The US Urban Resources
Partnership Program also has a healthy grant program which has funding
planting trees. (I am mentioning all these governmental funders because they
have a huge impact on urban forest management based on what they do and donšt
pay for. i.e. tree planting is heavily subsidized, tree care is not.) And as if that
wasnšt enough there is a pile of urban forest networking organizations; the
National Urban Forest Advisory Council, the Alliance for Community Trees, the
California Urban Forest Advisory Council, and California ReLeaf. Whew... The
common denominators are urban and trees.
> Actually, my personal mission here has always been to develop an
> on-line network of mutual support for independent community tree-
> planting (stewardship) programs
Thanks!
Jeff Hohensee
TreePeople
City of Angels
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