City of Sheboygan. Photo credit: Restoration of our Trees Sheboygan

In the past two months, Restoration of our Trees Sheboygan (ROOTS) celebrated the kickoff of five private-public sector emerald ash borer (EAB) mitigation projects in four communities throughout Sheboygan County, resulting in the safe removal of hundreds of dead ash trees and their accelerated replacement in public parks and on public thoroughfares.

These projects are underway in the City of Sheboygan, the City of Plymouth, the City of Sheboygan Falls, and the Village of Elkhart Lake. Each of these communities was awarded grant funding by the ROOTS Community Investment Fund. It initiated its first round of awards earlier this year through its executive agent, the Sheboygan County Rotary Foundation.

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2016 First Downs for Trees

On Oct. 26, the First Downs for Trees program celebrated its 10^th year by distributing 428 trees to 16 Brown County communities for planting. First Downs for Trees is a cooperative effort between the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Green Bay Packers, Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) and corporate sponsors Essity and Green Bay Packaging, Inc. The program donates trees to participating communities based on the number of first downs in the previous season.

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By Abe Lenoch, 1000 Friends of Wisconsin

1000 Friends of Wisconsin was awarded a U.S. Forest Service Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) grant to plant 350 trees across four Green Tier Legacy Communities (GTLC) in 2018. The GLRI grant program, through USFS, intends to improve Great Lakes water quality by restoring, protecting, and maintaining Great Lakes ecosystems. 1000 Friends partnered with four GTLC’s Ashland, Bayside, Oshkosh and Sheboygan and the Wisconsin DNR Urban Forests Program.

During the 2019 and 2020 growing seasons a total of 371 trees were planted. Each community bought and planted the trees, followed by an in-kind inspection from the DNR’s Urban Forest Regional Coordinator covering the respective GTLC’s. The increase in urban forest canopy helps to avoid roughly 21,889 gallons of stormwater runoff across all four GTLC’s. The trees were all planted on public property, mostly in right-of-ways, but the City of Ashland gave their trees a lakeside view and put them on the front lines of water quality defense by planting 34 trees in Bayview Park.

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By Jeanne Mueller, Cedarburg Green

“We have 6,715 street trees as of July 2020,” reported Kevin Westphal, Cedarburg Forester. “Totaling 70,000 diameter inches, the appraised value of Cedarburg’s street trees, based on CPI, is $10.5 million,” he continued. 

Since January, when Mayor O’Keefe declared 2020 the year to focus on trees, Cedarburg Green, with the help of a grant from the Wisconsin DNR, has been actively promoting trees and tree care throughout Cedarburg. With the hope of attracting attention to the City’s trees, Cedarburg Green attached price tags to a number of trees along Washington Avenue. “Trees are more than municipal objects,” said Jeanne Mueller, Cedarburg Green volunteer, “our main goals are to provide people with a sense of a tree’s economic value as well as show the many other benefits a tree provides.”

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By Sara Minkoff, DNR Urban Forestry Council liaison

The Wisconsin Urban Forestry Council is an advisory committee to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry, providing guidance on the best ways to preserve, protect, expand and improve Wisconsin’s urban and community forest resources. Currently comprised of 27 people appointed by the Secretary of the WDNR, members represent the diverse groups and interests that impact our state’s urban and community forests, including representatives from professional organizations, private business owners, educators, green industry employees, nonprofit/service organizations, governmental agencies, municipalities of various sizes, utilities, concerned and active citizens and trade organizations throughout the state. The Council addresses strategies to help the WDNR implement, monitor, and revise the state’s urban forestry initiatives and to lend support to activities that further the understanding, appreciation and practice of urban forestry in Wisconsin. Members strive to aid all entities involved in urban forestry matters and to help coordinate activities to avoid duplication, inefficiency and conflict.

Continue reading “Wisconsin Urban Forestry Council welcomes five new members” →

Wisconsin Urban Wood (WUW) and the City of Marshfield have joined efforts in a “Use Agreement” that serves as the conduit between the city’s logs and WUW’s sawmill and woodworker partners in the area. Through the use agreement, WUW members are granted access to the city’s marshalling yard to recover and remove city logs. The use agreement reduces disposal costs and the wood finds its way back into the community in beautiful ways.

Every year thousands of trees are removed from Wisconsin’s streets, backyards, parks and other green spaces due to storms, construction, disease or insects such as the Emerald Ash Borer. This process costs money and time for municipalities while bringing little value back to the community. Much of this removed urban wood is suitable for lumber, flooring, furniture, art, architectural design and household goods. By establishing this urban wood use agreement, Marshfield can utilize this local, sustainable and renewable resource to boost the local economy and reduce community expenses.

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Over the years, the Urban Tree Alliance (UTA), a Madison-based nonprofit, has launched several innovative programs that promote environmental equity. The first of these programs, the Madison Canopy Project, continues to offer free trees to homeowners in selected low-income, low-canopy neighborhoods. Initially funded with the assistance of DNR Urban Forestry Grants, the program now has other funding sources and is kicking off its seventh year.

UTA’s newest program, the Housing Partnerships Program, provides tree planting and technical tree assessment services for multi-family residential properties. UTA received 2019 and 2020 DNR Urban Forestry grants to implement and expand this program.

Why the focus on multi-family residences, you may ask? “Through our work in Madison neighborhoods, we have regularly encountered unmet opportunities for tree planting at thousands of multi-family properties,” explains Jeremy Kane, Director of UTA.

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