SEATTLE – In the past quarter century, the Emerald City in the Evergreen State has lost nearly 1.7 million trees – roughly half the urban forest that shaded yards, parks and open spaces – to population growth, lax maintenance and view seekers.
Seattle officials want to reverse the trend.
“Today I challenge every resident to plant a tree in your yard this fall,” Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels said Wednesday. His proposed Urban Forest Management Plan aims to get 650,000 new trees planted over the next 30 years. “We can all help turn back the threat to our forests, whether it’s by planting trees in our yards or volunteering in our forested parks,” he said.
Seattle’s tree cover has shrunk from 40 percent in 1972 to 18 percent today, a city news release said. The loss of trees undercuts nature’s ability to handle stormwater, reduce erosion and clean the air.
One catalyst for the project was “the realization that trees really are an important part of the civic infrastructure … They produce cooling. They’re a huge stormwater-management asset,” said John Healy in the Office of Sustainability and Environment, which will take the lead role in restoring the greenery.
“I think one thing we hope to do … is to dispel the myth that Seattle will be forever green if we continue on this trajectory,” he said. “We have to make plans now so Seattle is not ‘the city formerly known as emerald.’”
This isn’t Seattle’s first try, said Cass Turnbull, founder of Plant Amnesty.
“I haven’t seen it yet but I’m pretty sure it’s not enough,” she said of the plan. “There’s a history of a lot of planning but no action in the city of Seattle.”
A commitment to maintenance would be a start, she said. “Masses of trees were planted for the millennium and not watered,” and many died along parched city streets. “We have the money for this. People are unwilling to part with it. We’re going to be looking at a smog-filled Puget Basin and we’re going to be taking bodies out of poor people’s houses … Trees are low-income air conditioning.”
As the plan stands, she said, “it’s not an urban forest program, it’s a feel-good program.”
So what happened to the hundreds of thousands of trees that gave the city its nickname?
“It’s a combination of things,” Healy said. “The city’s second-growth forest is aging out, so old age is part of it. Invasive plants like English ivy (are) part of it. Construction is a piece of it.”
Sometimes it’s all about the view. In May, following a jury trial, a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paid the city more than $600,000 after nearly an acre of trees was clearcut in Colman Park, on land that bordered his Lake Washington view property. The judge claimed his gardener misunderstood his trimming instructions; the gardener said he was just carrying out his boss’ wishes.
That case is just the tip of the iceberg, arborists say.
Gordon Bradley, chairman of the College of Forest Resources faculty at the University of Washington, praised the idea of making the urban forest “a high priority and actually do something about it, possibly. You’d be amazed at the kinds of innovative programs there are across the country.”
A Sacramento, Calif., utility district spends about $1 million a year on a tree-planting program for the express purpose of energy conservation, he said.
Turnbull said she thought city residents would love an effective urban forest policy. “But they don’t have the political clout of the builders and developers,” she said.
The construction industry, which has flourished as area population growth has boomed, is anxious about the undertaking.
“We had a little bit of dialogue with Deputy Mayor (Tim) Ceis today,” said Tim Attebery with the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties. “We’re just requesting a seat at the table when the task force comes together in the fall” to weigh input from the public.
“There’s already fairly restrictive regulations in place,” he said. “We don’t want anything to get in the way of our being able to build affordable housing.”
While there was a sense in the city’s early history of clearing the wilderness to make way for civilization, the famed Olmsted Brothers, who designed New York’s Central Park, were called in early last century to enhance nature in Seattle, Bradley said. City arborists have encouraged street-tree plantings through the decades.
To kick off the campaign, the city is giving away 2,000 trees this fall to residents who apply for the Plant-a-Tree-for-Free program. Residential trees make up 42 percent of Seattle’s city’s tree canopy.
Nickels’ proposed 2007-08 budget includes $500,000 for new park trees and $400,000 for a neighborhood matching fund tree program. A proposal on the city’s November ballot includes $1.5 million to maintain and expand the number of street trees.
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