NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Thursday, April 13th, 2023

Washington’s DNR teams up with American Forests, City of Seattle to advance tree equity

Wash­ing­ton’s Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources is form­ing a new part­ner­ship with Amer­i­can Forests to advance tree equi­ty and reverse alarm­ing declines in tree canopy in com­mu­ni­ties across the Pacif­ic North­west, Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz and Amer­i­can Forests Pres­i­dent and CEO Jad Daley announced today at a press event with Seat­tle May­or Bruce Harrell.

The part­ner­ship, which will be known as the Wash­ing­ton Tree Equi­ty Col­lab­o­ra­tive, “will engage cities, com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions and stake­hold­ers dur­ing the next three years to build rig­or­ous and inclu­sive urban forestry pro­grams,” the Depart­ment says. It will make use of Amer­i­can Forests’ Tree Equi­ty Score, a tool freely avail­able to the pub­lic that mea­sures tree canopy cov­er in an increas­ing num­ber of cities and towns along socioe­co­nom­ic lines.

Watch the press conference:

Seat­tle is one of the first cities to join the collaborative.

May­or Har­rel­l’s admin­is­tra­tion has tak­en an inter­est in strength­en­ing Seat­tle’s tree pro­tec­tion poli­cies, which are in need of a com­pre­hen­sive update.

NPI’s research has repeat­ed­ly found that Seat­tleites are over­whelm­ing­ly in favor of updat­ing city codes to pre­serve as many mature trees as rea­son­ably pos­si­ble, in addi­tion to plant­i­ng new trees. Since the sum­mer of 2021, we have released three sets of find­ings con­cern­ing Seat­tleites’ views on this topic.

In Sep­tem­ber of 2021, we announced that we had found sup­port for:

  • increas­ing tree plant­i­ng in low income and pre­vi­ous­ly red­lined neigh­bor­hoods with insuf­fi­cient tree canopy to reduce heat island impacts and counter cli­mate damage
  • increas­ing pro­tec­tions for sig­nif­i­cant and excep­tion­al (large) trees
  • adding replace­ment require­ments for sig­nif­i­cant and excep­tion­al tree removal
  • cre­at­ing a city tree plant­i­ng and preser­va­tion fund
  • requir­ing tree care providers (arborists) to meet min­i­mum cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and train­ing and reg­is­ter with the city
  • cre­at­ing a per­mit­ting process for removal of sig­nif­i­cant trees (trees greater than six inch­es in diam­e­ter at four and a half feet high)
  • requir­ing Seat­tle devel­op­ers to max­i­mize the reten­tion of exist­ing trees through­out the plan­ning, devel­op­ment, and con­struc­tion process

In Decem­ber of 2021, we announced that we had found sup­port for:

  • Requir­ing that devel­op­ers com­plete a Tree Sur­vey and Tree Plan pri­or to con­struc­tion per­mits being approved
  • Cre­at­ing a new Seat­tle Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment and Cli­mate that would include a con­sol­i­dat­ed urban forestry division
  • Give pri­or­i­ty to plant­i­ng native and cli­mate resilient trees
  • Charge devel­op­ers replace­ment fees for trees that they remove and don’t replant, with the amount of the fee cor­re­spond­ing to the size of the removed tree to make up for lost canopy
  • Increase build­ing set­backs to allow larg­er, street-fac­ing trees to be planted
  • Reduce the num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant, non-excep­tion­al trees that can be removed by pri­vate prop­er­ty own­ers from three (3) per year to two (2) in three years
  • Low­er the upper lim­it for excep­tion­al tree pro­tec­tion from thir­ty (30) inch­es in tree diam­e­ter to twen­ty-four (24) inch­es in diameter

Last month, we unveiled yet anoth­er find­ing. We found that two-thirds of Seat­tle vot­ers are con­cerned about tree and canopy loss in their neigh­bor­hood and the city as hous­ing den­si­ty increas­es to meet the city’s grow­ing pop­u­la­tion.

Since May­or Har­rel­l’s swear­ing-in, the city has adopt­ed leg­is­la­tion requir­ing tree care providers (arborists) to meet min­i­mum cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and train­ing and reg­is­ter with the city. It sub­se­quent­ly cre­at­ed the posi­tion of city forester in the city’s bud­get. Now it’s work­ing on an update to the city’s tree pro­tec­tion ordi­nance with Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Dan Strauss and the rest of the Council.

What goes into that ordi­nance will be very consequential.

It’s easy to say that trees are impor­tant and to set tree canopy tar­gets. It’s much hard­er to actu­al­ly imple­ment strong poli­cies that pro­tect trees.

For exam­ple, May­or Har­rell has pledged to do the following:

  • Over the next five years, plant 8,000 trees on both pub­lic and pri­vate prop­er­ties; plant 40,000 trees in parks and nat­ur­al areas; and per­form main­te­nance on 40,000 trees.
  • By the end of 2023, imple­ment a pol­i­cy to require three trees to be plant­ed for every healthy, site-appro­pri­ate tree removed from city prop­er­ty. The same pol­i­cy will require two trees to be plant­ed for every tree that dies or is deemed haz­ardous or invasive.
  • By the end of 2024, devel­op a Tree Canopy Equi­ty and Resilience Plan for achiev­ing Seattle’s tree canopy goals.

Sounds good, but the fol­low-through is going to be key.

And, as men­tioned above, it’s not going to be enough to just plant new trees. That won’t be suf­fi­cient to arrest canopy declines. We also need much bet­ter strate­gies for pre­serv­ing mature trees, backed up by poli­cies with teeth.

We need a devel­op­ment cul­ture shift in Seat­tle and in the larg­er region. Trees can­not be viewed as obsta­cles to devel­op­ment — things that are in the way of build­ing a build­ing. Instead, they must be rec­og­nized for what they are — essen­tial neigh­bor­hood assets with tremen­dous val­ue — and treat­ed accordingly.

DNR’s increased empha­sis on urban forestry is a big deal. Com­mis­sion­er Hilary Franz is right­ful­ly proud that the state has more peo­ple and dol­lars com­mit­ted to defend­ing, sus­tain­ing, and grow­ing our urban forests. This is the kind of lead­er­ship we need from our Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources.

Our team was impressed by what we heard from Amer­i­can Forests Pres­i­dent and CEO Jad Daley yes­ter­day too.

Daley made sure dur­ing the press con­fer­ence to acknowl­edge the work of TreeP­AC and Friends of Seat­tle’s Urban Forests, who NPI has repeat­ed­ly part­nered with to study vot­ers’ views on pro­tect­ing trees in the Emer­ald City.

Amer­i­can Forests is bring­ing use­ful and action­able data to the table. This is exact­ly what states like Wash­ing­ton and Seat­tle need to under­stand how we com­pare to oth­er places, espe­cial­ly with respect to equity.

We know that tree canopy loss has­n’t hit every neigh­bor­hood the same. With rich­er, more com­plete data, we can get a bet­ter sense of the inequities that have result­ed from our past deci­sions so we can make bet­ter deci­sions for the future.

Read­ers, we hope you’ll take the time to watch some or all of the press con­fer­ence by play­ing the video above. We think you’ll find it very informative.

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