The District’s Department of Parks and Recreation spends a negligible amount of its budget managing the city’s trees, and environmental advocates are calling for a more comprehensive approach to arboreal maintenance.
There is a growing maintenance backlog in “natural assets,” said the city’s leading tree champion.
“If this system is broken, isn’t there a much more effective way to make sure the investment is properly made?” asked Jim Lyons, executive director of the Casey Trees Endowment Fund.
In 2005, the city’s Parks Department, which has oversight of 800 acres, spent only $47 per acre on tree management — less than $40,000 total. By comparison, Seattle and Philadelphia each spent more than $270 per acre. The amount does not include spending by the Urban Forestry Administration, an arm of the District Department of Transportation, which plants and manages the “street trees” between the curb and sidewalk.
A spokeswoman for Parks and Recreation said the agency has no dedicated budget line for tree management, and officials understand they “need to step up.”
“DPR has a very small tree division, and limited capacity to remove trees,” Regina Williams said in an e-mail. “We rely on contractors if our equipment is not suitable for the job.”
Williams said the department has a desire “to create a full-scale tree maintenance division” and has requested money in fiscal 2007 “for equipment and supplies to expand and enhance our tree division.”
The Urban Forestry Administration, meanwhile, pruned 18,278 street trees in 2005 and planted 4,030 new trees. The administration has a proposed $1.1 million budget for fiscal 2007, up from $274,000 in the current year.
Lyons said the city needs a “comprehensive urban forestry management plan” and a single entity to take up the charge. The District recently established a Department of the Environment, which is responsible for tree management policy. But DDOT remains responsible for street trees, schools for school grounds and parks for park grounds.
A 2005 Casey Trees study found 28.6 percent of the District was actually tree-covered, significantly less than 30 years prior.
D.C. tree stats
» 1.92 million trees as of 2005
» The trees store 523,000 tons of carbon
» The trees save $2.6 million a year in energy costs
» Heavy tree cover in the metro area has declined more than 30 percent over the past three decades
