Hey all, I’m curious to hear people weigh in on some of the interesting trees they encounter as a city arborist/ inspector/forester as well as folks’ experience working within municipal tree care teams.
Speaking from my own experience, it feels like a lot of the time we’re pretty limited in our treatment approaches to reacting to hazards(pruning deadwood, removals, etc.), rather than preventing them in the first place.
Ultimately, this restricts just what type of urban canopy/ecosystem we are capable of working with in the long run — i.e a lot of stressed and struggling trees. Any advice on helping improve this?
There’s been a huge push for new planting in my city (NYC🤫), as I’m sure there has been in many others, but I can’t help but notice the current problems our established trees are facing and wonder what the plan longterm plan is, young and old trees alike. How are your new plantings? Does it seem like they are starting off on the best foot? How much preservation work is done for established trees?
I’ve been pondering just how necessary corrective pruning is while trees are still young and planning to go out after my regular schedule of tasks are completed, rather than wait for the problems to develop.
I’m fairly new to this position and still trying to balance how best to care for communities/ trees/ and the larger environmental implications of this work, so thanks for bearing with my rambling —
I’m scheduled to take TRAQ and am fairly familiar with the assessment process, still, i feel there is more work to be done ensuring trees don’t get to the point of being certain hazards (I recognize this is inherently impossible to control, as some folks like to say: where ever there is a tree, there is a risk). Do you feel like you are doing the most for your urban ecosystem?
Ok, I’ll shut up now. Apologies if that isn’t all that coherent, just musing bout things now that I’ve completed my ‘regular schedule’ for the day 😉
Thanks for all thoughts!
by Ok_Neighborhood9953
3 Comments
I am not a municipal tree care person, but I do serve on our city’s tree advisory board. You bring up an excellent point: there is very little preventative maintenance done on trees to protect them. Our city arborist spends most of his time either pruning or removing trees, and he rants about this all the time. I think the biggest problem is budget: there is money for necessary tree work, like removals; but there is no money or staff to do preventative care, or to even educate tree owners about what care is needed. I don’t see a solution to this.
The foundation of any long term management plan is an inventory. Do you have that in place?
Cyclical trimming/inspection/maintenance is key. I’ve been a city forester since 2008 for 2 different communities. The biggest problem is typically funding for maintenance. I hire a contractor to trim medium-larger trees for me and my staff trims small trees up to 8” diameter currently. With this setup I am able to maintain a 5 year cycle on all street trees. With the same setup at my last city job I was closer to a 10-year cycle due to the large number of street trees we had to maintain.