By Allison Guy

WHEN THE CREEK FIRE roared to life near Shaver Lake, Calif., last September, it chewed through the area’s overgrown, sickly forests, belching smoke and spitting out blackened, matchstick trunks.

But in forests owned by the electrical utility Southern California Edison, the Creek’s famished roar turned to a purr. The wildfire licked over the landscape, charring mature trees but not killing them. There simply wasn’t enough fuel — dense, dry shrubs and drought-stricken trees — to feed the fire to excess.

This was in large part thanks to John Mount, a retired California Edison forester. In 1979, Mount quietly began setting controlled burns on the utility’s land surrounding Shaver Lake. His fires cleared overgrown brush and weeded out small and unhealthy trees. At the time, this flew in the face of conventional forestry practice, which, for a century, had labored to extinguish all fires as quickly as possible.

As a forestry student, the stance had made no sense to Mount. California’s forests thrived before modern wildfire control. “I simply asked myself a question,” Mount said. “If lightning has been starting fires for millennia, why are we putting them out?” Mount discovered for himself what North America’s native peoples had known for centuries: Setting moderate fires protects and rejuvenates the land, and prevents intense, dangerous wildfire. Now, after a record-busting fire season that scorched 4 million acres in California alone, it’s clear that our forests are starving for “good” fire — not just in the West, but across the country.

The gargantuan scale of the problem means that restoring flames to fire-famished forests won’t be easy or quick. With money and manpower, though, it can be done. “I’m more hopeful today than I’ve been for a while,” says Brittany Dyer, American Forests’ California state director. “Everyone is angry at the state of our forests. And once you get to anger, you get change.”

NATIVE FLAMES

The first Europeans to arrive in North America found a land of seemingly divine abundance: a profusion of nut trees and berry bushes, grassy clearings swarming with deer, parklike woodlands that you could drive a wagon through. It wasn’t providence they should have thanked, but native people.

For millennia, tribes across North America used fire as a tool to favor useful plants and animals. Fire regenerates bushes that produce food, dye, medicine and materials for baskets and tools. It aids oaks, and other trees that grow edible nuts, and opens up grazing areas for game animals. Ron Goode, the chairman of California’s North Fork Mono Tribe and an advocate for the restoration of tribal burning, explains: “The forest is a garden, and the native people took care of it.”

In the wildfire-prone landscapes of the western U.S., burning was also a matter of safety. It helped to prevent wildfires from encroaching on villages and kept extensive trail networks open as evacuation routes. People and wildlife used these trails when it was time to flee. “Lion has her kids, bear has her kids, deer has her kids,” Goode says. “Better hope no one is hungry.”

Tribes burned throughout the year, setting many small fires that added up in a big way. In California, an estimated 4.5 to 12% of the state’s land burned before Europeans arrived. Tribes burned around 2% of this total, or roughly 2 million acres, according to Goode. Now, in stark contrast, California burns somewhere between 50,000 and 125,000 acres a year.

The result of all that burning was a profoundly different landscape from the one we see today. Compared to today’s overcrowded forests, “the basal distance between trees was huge,” Goode says. “You might be talking 50 feet.” Burning created a rich patchwork of oak savannahs, meadows and pine-dotted slopes. Fire-adapted species flourished: not only oaks, but also sequoias, Ponderosas and other hardy conifers. Frequent, low-level fire also favored big, mature trees, which are more flame-proof than little ones. “It was well-documented that a ‘small’ tree was 6 feet in diameter,” Goode says.

Tribes set fires in all corners of the country, even in the East’s wet, fire-resistant woodlands. Many eastern forests that are now dim, dense thickets of trees and tangling underbrush were, for centuries, open, park-like spaces, with a far greater dominance of flame-resistant, food- bearing trees: American chestnuts, which are now functionally extinct due to disease, along with oaks and hickories.

Starved of fire, eastern oak-hickory forests are being outcompeted by northern hardwood species that grow profusely in ample rain and rich soil. This is bad news for nut-loving wildlife, as well as for communities that want to protect their forests for the future. Oaks and hickories are “better situated than northern hardwoods with dealing with a changing climate,” says Bill Zipse, a supervising forester with the New Jersey Forest Service. By letting less-resilient trees like beech and sugar maple overrun forests, “you might be setting yourself up with something more fragile now than what you started with.”

FLAME WARS

At first, Europeans didn’t snuff out all fire. Many colonizers actually adopted tribal burning methods, after seeing the good it did for the land. In the early days of the United States Forest Service, foresters debated whether total fire suppression was the goal, or if the “Indian way” of light burning should be.

The Great Fire of 1910 scorched all debate, along with 3 million acres in Idaho and Montana. This mammoth conflagration stunned the country and cemented the Forest Service’s zero-tolerance approach to wildfire. From then on out, all wildfire had to go, as soon as possible. In 1935, the agency institutionalized its infamous “10 a.m. policy” — the practice of put- ting out a wildfire the morning after its initial report. A decade later, Smokey Bear cemented the idea that forest fires are wasteful, even immoral.

Deprived of tribal burning, forests started to go haywire. The diverse mosaic of habitats that moderate burns once maintained turned to uniform sweeps of rangy, same-aged trees. Moist forests grew denser, wetter and less likely to burn. Dry forests, conversely, grew more likely to burn — not with your everyday “good” fire, but in tree-torching infernos. As Western forests racked up a deep “fire debt,” they grew cramped and unhealthy. Overcrowded trees competed for water, sunlight and nutrients, and succumbed to drought and bark beetle outbreaks that past forests had been able to withstand.

In California, the few advocates for controlled burning fought a current of entrenched belief.

“My mom even at one point burned a couple of times, and she got in trouble for it,” Goode recalls. “The fire people showed up, the sheriffs showed up. They all wanted to arrest her.” As for Mount, during his brief stint with the Forest Service before California Edison, he was “chastised quite soundly” for suggesting that fire could be good.

The legacy of over a century of fire famine — and decades of climate inaction — is now inescapable. Since 2014, drought and beetles alone have killed a staggering 162 million trees in California’s national forests. Fire seasons have grown longer, costlier and more severe. Last year’s record-breaking infernos in California, Colorado and Oregon underscored the apocalyptic cost of ignoring forest health. “The wildfires were not unforeseen or accidental,” says Dyer, of American Forests. “It was a bomb that was ready to go off.”

FLORIDA ON FIRE

Hope for our fire-hungry forests might, of all places, come from Florida, a state more famous for spring break than land stewardship. But with 1.5 to 2.5 million acres of controlled burns a year, the Sunshine State might be better distinguished as the Flame State.

Here, for many landowners, burning is considered as much a right as life, liberty and happiness. “Some of the best, intuitive, artistic fire professionals I’ve ever met were private landowners who learned the art of fire from their families,” says Zachary Prusak, the Florida fire manager for The Nature Conservancy.

Prusak, who grew up in Daytona Beach smelling smoke from controlled burns, has worked with prescribed fire for 33 years. He’s had plenty of time to reflect on what sets Florida apart, fire-wise. The biggest difference, he suspects, is that state residents simply never stopped burning. The Seminole Tribe has been burning uninterrupted for centuries. Cattle families, some of which have ranched the same land for five generations, are vocal proponents of fire, which regenerates grass for grazing.

Florida’s love affair with fire translates at the legislative level as well. The Great Fire of 1910, and the policies that came after, were blips on the radar. Following severe wildfires in 1998, the state amended its laws to make prescribed fire easier, not harder. Now, people can’t be held liable for damages or injuries from a controlled burn unless proven “grossly negligent.” In addition, a culture of collaboration — a necessity, given Florida’s densely packed population — makes it easier to work across agencies, and across public and private lands.

Of course, nothing is perfect. Even with the statewide enthusiasm for firelighting, Florida’s landscapes are still hungry for more. Sandhill habitats and longleaf pine forests need to be sated with fire every two to three years, or run the risk of withering away. “To use an Alice in Wonderland metaphor, we are the Red Queen. We’re trying to run as fast as we can just to stay in the same place,” Prusak says. “We need to do more.”

BACK TO THE BURN

Florida is one of fire’s biggest fans, but it isn’t alone. Many other states, tribes and private entities have progressive mindsets and policies when it comes to controlled burning. New Jersey, for example, passed legislation in 2019 making it easier for private landowners to burn. The state’s Forest Fire Service boasts dedicated fire wardens, who manage both fire suppression and prescribed burns. “I don’t even see that in most western states, let alone most eastern states,” says Zipse, of the N.J. Forest Service. “That’s kind of a luxury.”

Ironically, the places that would most benefit from firelighting have historically been the most averse to it. Across the West, communities and regulators have long balked at controlled burns, and for understandable reasons. Smoke is a nuisance, and downright dangerous to people with lung conditions such as asthma. There’s always the risk, though remote, that a burn could spin out of control and hurt people or structures.

Attitudes can change, though, and fast. In Shaver Lake, John Mount overcame any initial resistance with good old public outreach. “That meant going to coffee shops every morning,” he says. “I would stop off and have a beer in the after- noon. I went to every Lion’s Club meeting, every Women’s Club meeting. They very quickly understood that having to put up with a little smoke … that I was really protecting their homes.”

In the wake of the 2020 wildfires, more communities are clamoring for prescribed fire and other fuel reduction work. Culture is less of a barrier now than scale: Western wildlands are vast, and massive slices are federally owned. Forty percent of land in Colorado is federal. That number jumps to 50% in California and Oregon, and 60% in Idaho.

For forests that depend on regular fire to stay healthy, this isn’t great news. The U.S. Forest Service and other federal land agencies are chronically understaffed and underfunded, and tend to be more risk-averse and less nimble when it comes to prescribed fire. Even as the merits of “good” fire have come into laser focus, the use of prescribed fire on western lands flatlined — and in some cases decreased — over the last decade. Perhaps not surprisingly, the only national agency that has significantly increased prescribed fire is the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Money and manpower are major hurdles. In California, for example, a whopping 20 million acres need to burn before forests and other habitats stabilize. Prescribed fire alone costs around $200 an acre — but because so many forests in California are too overgrown to burn without raging out of control, they first need to be thinned of excess brush and trees, to the tune of roughly $1,500 an acre. Environmental permits can cost as much as the on-the-ground work itself. “You’re looking at a price tag of potentially billions of dollars,” Dyer says.

Those pricey permits don’t necessarily translate to action. In Oregon, 1.3 million acres of federal land are permitted for prescribed fire, but are languishing without funds or foresters to do the work. Burn crews can be vanishingly scarce, and the complexity of coordinating with a mishmash of local, state and national agencies means that these crews are often unavailable during the narrow, unpredictable weather windows when it’s safe to burn.

Still, some promising changes are on the horizon. “A fire season like this kind of coalesces our attention,” says Courtney Schultz, a wildfire policy expert at the University of Colorado. “I do think there’s some good momentum around prescribed fire.” She cited the National Prescribed Fire Act of 2020, which would provide $300 million a year for federal agencies to set prescribed fires, $10 million for burns in areas at high risk of severe wildfire, and a cash incentive to any local or state government conducting burns bigger than 100,000 acres.

More money is on the way. In 2018, American Forests helped to pass the “Fire Funding Fix,” which secured stable funding for wildfire fighting, without cannibalizing money from other federal programs that benefit forests. In August, California announced it will begin using fire and other fuel-reduction methods on 1 million acres of land each year by 2025.

At the same time, a recent cultural shift towards “shared stewardship” is enhancing collaboration between federal and state agencies, nonprofits, tribes and other groups. This enables identifying the most at-risk forests on a landscape scale, rather than ownership-by-ownership, and using science to prioritize where to send money, expertise and manpower. American Forests is supporting this shift by convening meetings, providing research and advancing policies that align with shared stewardship.

Our forests are going to burn, one way or another. The climate crisis is fueling early springs, deep droughts and withering temperatures, guaranteeing ever-bigger, hotter wildfires. If we want to stave off devastating flames — which decimate forests, watersheds, homes and wildlife — we have to cut carbon emissions in half in the next decade, all while taking sweeping action to restore forest health. Firelighting alone won’t solve our forest woes, but it’s a big part of the solution. “We have to make friends with fire,” Dyer says. “Without it, the whole system will collapse.”

Allison Guy writes from Washington, D.C., and is American Forests’ senior manager of communications, American ReLeaf.

The post The United States of Fire appeared first on American Forests.

IN 1977, DR. J. MICHAEL SCOTT NOTICED SOMETHING seriously amiss with ‘Akiapōlā‘au, ‘I‘iwi and some of Hawaii’s other endangered songbirds. Their numbers were plummeting, throwing them into even graver danger. He identified the east side of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on Hawaii Island, as one place where robust bird populations were declining fast.

Scott, one of the first endangered species biologists hired by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), turned to his agency, The Nature Conservancy and other entities to create the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge. It’s an area of almost 34,000 acres whose restoration is essential for the continued survival of Hawaiian songbirds.

What has followed is a mighty effort to regenerate the degraded forests of Hakalau, an enormous project that continues to this day and has been recognized as one of the most successful examples of native forest restoration in the world.

American Forests was instrumental to this success from early on — supporting the replanting of some 165,000 koa trees from 1992 to 1996 — and is now planning to bring a new infusion of energy and capital to the next stage of forest restoration and bird conservation.

Baron Horiuchi describing the concept of laulima, or many hands. He credits the success of reforestation efforts to the dedicated volunteers and staff working together to return native plants to Hakalau Forest. Photo Credit: Megan Nagel / USFWS

CREATING HAKALAU

Starting in 1985, the refuge’s founders acquired parcels of the landscape from private owners to patch together the protected area. They quickly observed that the upper third of these lands, roughly 13,000 acres, had been cleared of native forests and converted to pasturelands. The lower portion was covered in largely intact forest and marshland.

That cleared land was only one reason that the area’s bird populations were declining. Other problems included predation by cats, mongooses and rats, as well as habitat degradation by feral pigs and cattle. But the Southern house mosquito (Culex quinquefasciatus) was by far the biggest threat to Hawaiian songbirds, given that they infect birds with avian malaria and pox virus. And, unfortunately, these non-native mosquitoes thrive below 4,500 feet — the portion of the refuge that retained some of the most intact forest birds’ native habitat.

As the refuge was established, it became clear that restoration efforts needed to focus on moving the birds’ habitat up the slope to higher elevations so they could escape the mosquitoes. This was more easily said than done, considering that the upper pasturelands were filled with Kikuyu grass, an invasive species that is incredibly persistent and prevents many native forest plants from growing.

“If you were to go back in a time machine and see what the landscape looked like , there probably wasn’t a lot of grass,” says Tom Cady, manager of Hakalau Refuge. “The native grass that would have been here was fairly benign, and the forest and grass were adapted to each other. Now there are a lot of these foreign grasses, and for a long time they were grazed heavily, but they’re not grazed anymore, and they have exploded.”

But the grasses didn’t stop the full-steam-ahead effort to restore the forest canopy on some of the deforested pasturelands. With American Forests’ help, refuge staff and volunteers planted 5,000 acres of koa, the largest and one of the most culturally important native tree species in the Hawaiian Islands. The tree’s beautiful and highly valued hardwood is a symbol of royalty and has long been used by native Hawaiians to build canoes, surfboards and ukuleles.

A key element in this reforestation effort was the dogged work of one man, Baron Horiuchi, the only horticulturalist working for USFWS. He is renowned in the conservation community — “a restoration legend” — says Dr. Stephanie Yelenik, who spent 2013 to 2020 as a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at Hakalau.

Horiuchi has single-handedly figured out how to propagate and nurture many of the native and endangered plants in the refuge and runs the nursery that supplies the vast majority of seedlings for Hakalau’s restoration efforts. To propagate koa, he realized that the seeds begin to grow once they’ve been given a bath of boiling water, a technique that has allowed him to provide a steady supply of these important trees for replanting. The boiling water weakens the impermeable external seed coat, which provides protection during dormancy, thereby replicating the processes that would have historically occurred in nature via fire, birds’ digestions or in some other manner.

Thanks to his ingenuity, portions of Hakalau’s landscape have been transformed from grasslands to developing forest anchored by hundreds of thousands of koa.

“The refuge is only about 35 years old, and if you see that most of the outplanting started in the early 1990s, and you look at the trees today, anybody can see a dramatic difference,” says Cady. “You can see how the landscape that is the refuge has changed dramatically over time.”

As the canopy was restored, some species of birds began to come back.

The Hawaii ‘A¯ kepa is one of the smallest honeycreepers and can be found in ‘o¯hi‘a and koa-‘o¯hi‘a forests above 4,500 feet. Photo Credit: Jack Jeffery

BIRDS IN DANGER

Birds returning to restored forests is indeed a great success, but more must be done to halt the continuing decline of Hawaii’s wild species. Due to habitat destruction and the incursion of non- native species, Hawaii is often referred to as the “extinction capital of the world.” The state comprises less than 1% of the land mass of the U.S., but it is home to 40% of all threatened and endangered plant and animal species in the country.

The invasive mosquitoes have contributed to the extinction of more than 31 species of birds, including 24 species of honeycreepers and the entire Mohoidae family, including the magnificent ‘Ō‘ō group. The mosquitos are on track to spread to all disease-free forest habitats on the islands, potentially causing the extinction of at least 12 species of Hawaii’s remaining honeycreepers, such as the ‘Akiapōlā‘au, Hawaii ‘Ākepa and ‘I‘iwi, and negatively affecting the remaining native thrushes, flycatchers and ‘Alalā.

Helping establish bird habitat above the reach of the mosquitoes is the lynchpin to ensuring the birds survive. To do so, native fruit-producing plant species must be present in the forest under- story. Species, such as Ākala (native raspberries), ‘Ōhelo (tart berries), Kāwa‘u (native holly) and Pilo (in the coffee family), attract the robin-like ‘Oma’o, also called the Hawaiian thrush, the only native exclusively fruit-eating bird left on the Hawaii Island.

“The birds that only eat fruit are slower to move into those forest areas,” says Yelenik. “There’s no fruit for them to eat so why would they hang out there? But you want them there so they can carry the seeds to plant the fruit that will feed them.”

This leads to the next logical question: Where is the fruit? Restoration efforts have included planting tens of thousands of fruit-producing plants, most of which are doing well. But despite that success, more plants are needed to lure the birds. And they’re not regenerating naturally. What’s preventing these native plants from coming back on their own?

The answer, far from simple, represents that next stage of this important work.

Endangered Lobelioids Clermontia pyrolaria under one of the early koa outplantings, now mature. Photo Credit: Leah Messer / USFWS

STRIVING FOR DIVERSITY

Koa trees, the foundation for the thriving forest that the birds need, have grown in abundance. Yet, as Yelenik found in her research, koa fixes nitrogen in the soil, which fertilizes the Kikuyu grass. Well-fed, the grass continues to grow robustly and choke out all the other native vegetation that’s important for healthy forest bird habitat, including fruit-producing plants that nourish some of the birds.

“The diversity that would have been before anyone ever stepped foot here would have been incredible,” reflects Yelenik. “The vast majority of those are now gone. We have a very limited pool of native species to work with. They do not compete well with all of the invasive plants that have come to play here in the Hawaiian Islands.”

Yelenik provided science that helps inform refuge managers’ decisions on how to improve their strategy for understory planting. She led research on the importance of plant diversity, density, soil turnover and other factors in the regrowth of the understory. One of the major things her research group found lacking as part of the foundation for the forest are ‘ōhi‘a trees, another important native tree species that has very different properties from koa.

‘Ōhi‘a is a flowering tree in the myrtle family that can grow in the form of a shrub or a tall tree. Once ‘ōhi‘a gets big enough, it can successfully outcompete some of the nuisance understory species, including grass, allowing more native species to flourish.

“The entire ecosystem welcomed the koa trees back, which is unusual,” says Austin Rempel, forest restoration manager at American Forests. “The only problem is that the koa trees get big and look like a mature natural forest, but some of the understory plants and trees aren’t coming back. It’s mostly a grassy understory. But the recipe for success is there.”

Yelenik says that success in the understory- restoration efforts would look like a diversity of native plants that are regenerating on their own, as well as the presence of birds and the tendency of those birds to continue to move uphill.

Climate change is making the need for the birds’ habitat to move continuously higher ever-more pressing as one of the birds’ greatest threats moves higher, too.

RACE AGAINST THE MOSQUITOES

Mosquitoes typically can go above the 4,500-foot elevation line during warm summer months, says Steve Kendall, wildlife biologist for the Big Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex, who retired at the end of 2020. Historically, they have been above that line so briefly that they don’t spread much disease. However, he says, “with climate change, we expect that line to keep on moving up.”

This dynamic lends a sense of urgency to conservation efforts.

“It’s a race, and our part of it is too slow, really, to beat the mosquito problem,” says Cady, the manager of Hakalau Refuge. “Our number one priority is how do we outcompete mosquitos or beat them back? How can we keep them at bay so that the bird populations can continue to flourish?”

A native koa forest. Photo Credit: USFWS

“A BIGGER-PICTURE APPROACH”

The immediate answer is to take more aggressive action in moving the birds’ habitat uphill, while simultaneously continuing to work on restoring the understory of the already-replanted areas.

The refuge’s plant propagation and outplanting program has remained highly productive since American Forests helped get 165,000 trees in the ground. The coronavirus pandemic has challenged progress, since volunteers — who pro- vide most of the labor for the program — haven’t been able to come to the refuge. New investments in propagating and planting understory plants and ‘ōhi‘a will help convert the 5,000 acres of former pasture back to native forest. There are also plans to expand those forestlands onto surrounding land owned and managed by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, an agency that oversees the use of certain public lands to benefit native Hawaiians.

Immediately up the mountainside from Hakalau lies a Hawaiian Home Lands area that starts at its lower elevations as a solid, impenetrable, 5,000-acre monoculture of gorse, a flowering, thorny exotic shrub that makes establishing new forest virtually impossible. But further uphill is the Mauna Kea State Forest Reserve, an area of dry sub-alpine woodlands which is connected to Hakalau by the Kanakaleonui Bird Corridor, a narrow strip of land currently under restoration that will enable forest birds to move between the two forests.

Mauna Kea Reserve, in contrast to the wet forests of Hakalau, has more native māmane, a flowering tree, and other types of native plants. Horiuchi, Hakalau’s horticulturalist, can help in replanting areas closer to the refuge, as he has figured out by trial and error how to propagate māmane. It’s done by cutting off an end of the seed to prompt its growth.

American Forests is teaming up with the global customer relationship management leader, Salesforce, the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge and Mauna Kea Watershed Alliance to push this project forward, restoring 20 acres of degraded forest in the bird corridor by planting 6,000 koa and understory plants. The group will be hiring a nursery technician to lend a hand and learn Horiuchi’s tried-and-true methods for growing Hawaii’s endangered flora. They will be supported by a four-person “strike team” that will return to the bird corridor every spring to plant. The project will also focus on community engagement and enlisting volunteers to help pull weeds, collect seeds and plant seedlings. As such, this project will be like much of the restoration work at Hakalau, which has been done by volunteers from the community, some of whom have been coming to volunteer for decades.

“We are looking at a bigger-picture approach where the refuge plays a role, Salesforce plays a role, and some of our other partners play a role,” says Cady. “That way we could reforest lands next door that are at higher elevation. It’s our job to put those plant and tree species together and get this forest back to something as close as possible as it once was.”

It’s a big task, but the professionals who have worked on this for decades know what it takes to succeed. They’ve honed their reforestation approach in every aspect, from propagating seedlings to analyzing ecosystems, and they can add their solutions to the already well-established and celebrated conservation project at Hakalau.

“I can’t think of many better places to put trees, honestly,” says Rempel. “If these birds are using them, then each acre we put in is more habitat. And that’s what they need: more habitat. It makes a lot of sense.”

Sources: Big Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex (USFWS); Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge (USFWS); Mauna Kea Watershed Alliance.

Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer specializing in helping mission-driven changemakers like tech disruptors and dynamic nonprofits tell their stories.

The post Bringing Songbirds Back To Hawaii, One Forest at a Time appeared first on American Forests.

Eboni Hall spends her days split between research, increasing urban forestry education at institutions, assisting youth in navigating their urban forestry career path and mentoring students, all while working to achieve Tree Equity. Photo Credit: Eboni Hall

WHEN EBONI HALL FIRST ENTERED COLLEGE, she thought for sure she was going to become a sports therapist. She wanted to learn kinesiology, the study of body movement and muscles. It was a sensible choice, something familiar, and a far cry from her ultimate path in urban forestry.

She’d grown up in Baton Rouge, La., entrenched in a love for natural areas, her childhood full of making mud pies, climbing trees and reading books outside. Despite that connection to nature, she’d never really thought about urban forestry as a concept, let alone a potential career path. “I remember thinking, urban forestry? That sounds like some- thing for tree huggers,” she says.

It was during a summer program called BAYOU, Beginning Agricultural Youth Opportunities Unlimited, at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, that Hall’s world changed. Hall is young, Black and a woman, quite different from the typical description of a forester, a field long dominated by white men. “People of color don’t have a reflection of themselves in this field, and they get discouraged,” says Hall. “Maybe if people see I’m able to do it, they’ll think they can.”

Teen Urban Tree Corps member Maya Hall demonstrates how to input data on a street tree to Boston City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George. Photo Credit: David Meshoulam

The BAYOU program introduced Hall to an array of environmental science disciplines and job opportunities that redefined urban forestry for her. She went on to study the discipline at Southern, the only four-year university that offers a bachelor’s degree in urban forestry. Eventually, she earned her Ph.D. and now works as the senior manager of urban forestry education at American Forests. Hall has made it her life’s mission to provide other young people with the inspiration she found through BAYOU. In doing so, she is shaping one of the most important roles for building social and environmental equity and combating climate change.

CREATING THE NEXT GENERATION OF URBAN FORESTERS

People who work in urban forestry are addressing climate change, as well as social and environmental equity. City trees help absorb carbon from the atmosphere and make people’s lives better by providing shade, filtering the air, lifting moods and more. Trees also create jobs. But not everyone benefits equally from trees, largely because socioeconomically disadvantaged communities historically have lacked trees. A blossoming movement toward Tree Equity — which, simply put, is about ensuring every city neighborhood has enough trees so that every person benefits from them — is fueling the demand for more urban foresters. In fact, jobs for people who can plant, prune and maintain trees in cities is expected to grow 10% by 2028.

Attracting young people to the field is essential to growing that workforce. Hall and others like her are taking on the challenge, educating youth about urban forestry and related fields as a career and helping create clear pathways for professional advancement. The first step is making sure these future foresters understand that city trees are more than something nice to look at.

Suleima Mednick-Coles is cobbling together her interests as an amalgamation of multiple majors and minors. Photo Credit: Suleima Mednick-Coles

TREES AS CRITICAL URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE

In America’s cities, trees help the environment, but they also play a vital role in fulfilling our basic needs. That is particularly true during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Green spaces are a peaceful place to go to find refuge. When you don’t have access to them, you often are surrounded by unhealthy environmental conditions, and it has impacts on mental health,” says Suleima Mednick-Coles, one of Hall’s mentees and a student in the Black Scholars program at the University of San Francisco.

Making the connection between the importance of caring for trees and how they benefit day-to-day life is critical to growing interest in urban forestry, says Sarah Anderson, director of Career Pathways at American Forests. “Communities with low tree canopy cover tend to have higher rates of unemployment, and if you don’t have access to trees, you can’t make money caring for them.”

Job opportunities to plant and care for trees are expected to rise, thanks in part to the important role cities will play in the global trillion trees movement. In order to meet that need, American Forests has set a goal that by 2030 at least 100,000 people, particularly those from socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, will enter jobs in forestry. “I think it’s something that’s really a no-brainer to invest in,” Anderson says. “And it’s a well-paying one, with average entry-level tree workers earning about $20 an hour, roughly $40,000 per year.”

PAVING THE WAY

One obstacle to building an urban forestry workforce is that many young people don’t know how to access the field, or that it even exists. American Forests is working with Southern University and groups like Speak for the Trees, Boston to raise awareness of, and build bridges to, the field.

American Forests has developed two guides to help individuals map their journeys to urban forestry careers: the Career Pathways Exploration Guide and the Career Pathways Action Guide. Geared toward people who could benefit most from joining the field, these guides spotlight educational pathways and entry-level job training programs that train and place individuals who face barriers to employment so that they can enter the field. There are pilot projects in six cities: Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago, Providence, R.I., and Syracuse, N.Y.

The local programs also try to provide additional services, such as transportation and childcare, both significant barriers to job entry in communities where people are struggling financially. “It’s all about meeting people where they’re at, physically, emotionally, age-wise,” says David Meshoulam, executive director of Speak for the Trees, Boston.

Job shadowing, paid apprenticeship and pre- apprenticeship programs can remove barriers to finding viable careers. “Many youth live in the now and go into survival mode in order to provide for their families,” says Hall. “They can’t afford to stop working to improve a skill set.” That’s where partner- ships, programs, resources and expertise provided by American Forests come into play.

Photo Credit: Bouyant Partners / American Forests

A FIELD WITH MANY DISCIPLINES

One exciting outlook in the field of urban forestry is how expansive it is. Traditionally, urban forestry has been synonymous with arboriculture and tree maintenance, Hall says. “But urban forestry encompasses so much more than trees alone.”

An array of disciplines have jobs that fall under the urban forestry umbrella: environmental law, hydrology, psychology, soil science, urban planning and public health, to name a few.

Currently, Southern University and A&M College is the only university in the United States that offers a designated degree in urban forestry. Students elsewhere often have to create their own paths. For example, at the University of San Fran- cisco, Mednick-Coles is cobbling together her interests as an amalgamation of multiple majors and minors that encompasses international studies, sustainable development and environmental justice and African-American studies. To entice and prepare students, Hall hopes more colleges and universities will begin offering urban forestry programs, making more connections to other disciplines and utilizing an interdisciplinary urban forestry curriculum she developed.

Today, Hall spends her days split between research, increasing urban forestry education at institutions, assisting youth in navigating their urban forestry career path and mentoring students, all while working to achieve Tree Equity.

“Don’t wait too long to take that exam,” Hall teases, while on a recent Zoom call with Jordan Davis. Davis is about to graduate with a degree in urban forestry from Southern University. He entered college bent on studying engineering when he discovered the BAYOU program and a new future. The exam Hall is referring to is the

International Society of Arboriculture Credential, a requirement to become a certified arborist. Davis laughs good-naturedly. “I won’t. I won’t,” he says.

He’s thinking of returning to his hometown of Jackson, La., to provide urban forestry community outreach. A lot of students get interested in jobs they learn about in high school, Davis says. He wants urban forestry to be one of them. He’s thinking of someday launching his own arboriculture business. His family even started a company, Carpet Cuts, LLC, a lawn care business that incorporates tree care. His face beams with pure optimism.

Morgan Heim is a conservation journalist based in Oregon’s forest country.

The post Seeing the city for the trees appeared first on American Forests.

WHEN I GRADUATED from college, I faced a choice. Go to law school and pursue environmental law or go into environmental education. I chose education because I believed then, as I do now, that the passion of young people can be the engine to overcome our biggest challenges, such as climate change.

Little did I know just how much young people would lead! And not just the famous climate activist Greta Thunberg. Youth are leading everywhere and on all aspects of climate action, from indigenous youth leading forest conservation to the school strike movement that has mobilized millions of youth and their supporters in the streets.

While I am impressed by their passion, I am even more impressed by the skills and maturity of these young leaders. Frequently, when I attend high-powered meetings of climate leaders, the most confident and eloquent voices in the room are young people. They have worked hard to advance their ideals, and you can see that they understand the craft of communication.

The same is true with organizing. Youth activists are leveraging social media in ways we older folks can only dream of, and they are showing social skills and an inclusive spirit that puts to shame the coarse public discourse that has too often overtaken our politics.

I am sharing this because American Forests is putting youth right up front in our work. In our earlier years, we were focused on educating and activating youth. But that had slipped away entirely by the time I joined the organization three years ago. While it has forced us to restore some lost skills and relationships, we have committed to creating a strong place for youth partners in our programs.

One embodiment of this commitment can be seen in the U.S. Chapter of 1t.org, which we lead with the World Economic Forum. We secured the Girl Scouts of the USA and Jane Goodall Institute’s youth organization, Roots and Shoots, to serve as inaugural members of the chapter’s stakeholder council. They are helping us marry the interest of young people in trees and forests with their concerns about slowing climate change and protecting biodiversity.

Our commitment is also present in our development of a Tree Equity movement in cities. Part of creating Tree Equity is encouraging young people, particularly those in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, to embrace the power of trees as part of the larger movements they are building to advance environmental and social equity, including climate justice.

We are also helping youth explore and enter careers in urban forestry. We have a digital Career Pathways Action Guide, as well as a new initiative to increase participation from youth of color in urban forestry education programs, which you can read more about in “Seeing the city for the trees.” Likewise, in rural areas, we partner with the Sierra Nevada Conservancy to help early career young people get a start in the vital work of restoring climate-resilient forest landscapes in California.

All of these activities connect to American Forests’ proud history in helping to establish the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which primarily engaged younger people. With emphasis on generating new economic activities that can help jump start our economy, and parallel interest in stepping up investment in trees and forests, there is huge potential for federal and state government to re-establish CCC-like programs. American Forests’ policy team has been helping to incubate proposals, such as a Climate Stewardship Corps provision in the federal Climate Stewardship Act. We also played an important advisory role in California’s new establishment of a Climate Corps.

The bottom line is this: Youth are not waiting for their turn in line to lead. They are stepping up right now to move our country forward. We have the opportunity and obligation to empower this youth leadership through trees and forests, and to help channel this toward climate change and other challenges. I hope that you share my excitement at the new power we can create for change by drinking from this fountain of youth leadership.

You will hear much more about this from American Forests in the years to come. Thanks for making stretch moves like this possible!

For more news and updates from Jad, follow him on Twitter @JadDaley.

The post Offshoots: Young leaders stand tall for forests and climate appeared first on American Forests.

BRITTANY AND GILBERT DYER are good at turning problems into opportunities. A decade ago, the pair met when Brittany bumped into Gilbert at a bar and spilled her beer on him. “It was love at first sight,” Gilbert laughs. They married in 2017 in a “secret wilderness wedding” attended by six friends and five dogs.

Now, the Dyers work to fix a far thornier issue: California’s flagging forest health. As the California state director for American Forests, Brittany works to restore forests across the state, particularly those charred by severe wildfires. Gilbert is a fire prevention officer with the United States Forest Service, where he’s worked for the last 20 years.

As familiar as they are with wildfires, the biggest single fire in California history left them stunned. On September 4, the Creek Fire exploded about 13 miles from their house in North Fork, growing to 40,000 acres in a single day. “The fire moved the fastest I’ve ever seen without being in a desert with high winds,” Gilbert said.

The next day, Gilbert left home before sunrise to patrol for unsafe campfires and other issues from Labor Day weekend campers. A few hours later, Brittany walked to a nearby creek to meditate. She knew the Creek Fire was raging not too far away, but it seemed unlikely it could cross the “big wet firebreak” of the San Joaquin River. As she sat, though, “all of a sudden a weird feeling came over me,” she recalls. Something was telling her to leave. She raced home to grab their dogs and evacuation bags, fleeing in sight of a 50,000-foot pyrocumulus cloud — one of the largest ever recorded.

The evacuation that followed lasted nearly a month and tested the Dyers’ limits. Gilbert worked back-to-back 24-hour shifts, snatching just a few hours of sleep at a time. Brittany, still working long days for American Forests, evacuated to one friend’s house, and then another.

But even through smoke and flame, the pair found ways to be together. On Gilbert’s birthday, Brittany tracked down where he and his crew would be sleeping for the night, and drove up to deliver cupcakes. Because of pandemic concerns, the pair couldn’t hug. “That was really hard,” Brittany says. “I just wanted to be in his arms.”

In late September, Brittany and Gilbert were cleared to return home. Their house escaped with minor damage, but many of their neighbors’ houses and nearby forests did not. “It’s devastation,” Gilbert says. “Driving though it every day, it still pretty much brings a tear to the eye.”

The Creek didn’t wreak total destruction. Brittany expects that portions of the 380,000-acre burn scar will prove to be moderate “good” fire, which rejuvenates rather than wrecks forests.

The blaze mostly spared Jackass Lake in the John Muir Wilderness, where Brittany and Gilbert got married ankle-deep in the lake’s water. Even then, they knew that the climate crisis would one day reshape their lives — both worked it into their vows, unknown to the other. Their house is in the center of a tinderbox, where climate change-fueled drought and pest outbreaks have killed 163 million trees since 2010. It was just a matter of time before it burned.

Despite the fire, the pair is hopeful. The scope of the destruction has finally made the state’s wildfire problem impossible to ignore. Brittany dreams of a day when the wail of sirens doesn’t mean danger, but that her husband and other forestry workers are out setting controlled burns, a key tool to prevent out-of-control wildfires. She’s gearing up to make American Forests a driving force to reforest the Creek Fire’s burn scar.

As for Gilbert? “Being a firefighter,” he says, “it makes you prepared for anything.”

The post Earthkeepers: A bond forged in fire: Brittany and Gilbert Dyer appeared first on American Forests.

CLIMATE CHANGE-induced extreme heat is a serious and growing problem for cities nationwide. For desert cities, such as Phoenix, figuring out the best way to plant and care for trees is critical to addressing this problem. And saving lives.

That’s because extreme heat puts many people — especially low-income families, the homeless and people with respiratory illnesses — at risk of heat-related illnesses and death. In 2019, 187 people died from heat-related causes in Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes the city of Phoenix, one of the nation’s hottest cities. That’s an increase of 232% from 2006, according to data from the Maricopa County Department of Public Health.

In cities, trees help cool down neighborhoods and mitigate the health impacts of extreme heat, making them critical life and death infrastructure. The city of Phoenix is committed to planting trees to help double its vegetative land cover to 25% over the next decade.

American Forests is working to help achieve that goal. One way is co-leading the Phoenix Metro Urban Forestry Roundtable, a coalition of more than 40 local partners, including members from academia and local nonprofit organizations, as well as city, county and state government. Together, a plan for planting trees in an equitable way is being created. The first step is identifying which neighborhoods need trees the most.

With the help of an award from the Microsoft Datacenter Community Environmental Sustainability initiative, American Forests has done this by calculating Tree Equity Scores for all urban neighborhoods in Maricopa County.

A Tree Equity Score uses a science-based approach to determine the tree canopy cover needed in a neighborhood to ensure the people living in urban areas benefit from trees.

People can use the scores to prioritize planting and conserving trees, as well as allocating resources for trees in neighborhoods that lack them. For example, city governments and urban foresters might use the scores to make the case for planting trees in neighborhoods where families can’t afford to run their air conditioning units 169 days out of the year — the average number of days Phoenix experiences temperatures of 90 degrees or higher per year.

Roundtable participants also are assessing which tree species can tolerate the area’s high temperatures and developing best practices for keeping trees alive in desert climates. This is important because planting trees in the desert presents a number of challenges, including drought and protecting trees during monsoon events. The purpose of American Forests’ work in Phoenix is to increase not only the number of trees but also the level of care they receive long term.

“We know as trees grow, so do the health and environmental benefits they provide,” says Aimee Esposito, executive director of Trees Matter, a member of the Phoenix Metro Urban Forestry Roundtable. “With our collaborative efforts, Phoenix trees can grow longer and stronger. And with Tree Equity Score, we can use our collective knowledge to plant trees in places where people need them the most.”

The comprehensive approach American Forests is taking with its partners in Phoenix will ensure trees thrive, especially in places that need them the most, reducing temperatures, improving air quality and advancing environmental and social equity. That’s called creating Tree Equity. And when trees thrive in Phoenix, American Forests will be able to share and replicate what worked there with other cities nationwide that face similar challenges.

The post Place-Based Partnerships: Coming together to plant trees and help them thrive in desert cities appeared first on American Forests.

IN SCATTERED SWATHS of Michigan woodlands, more than 264,000 jack pine seedlings are helping bring back the nesting habitat of a treasured songbird.

But these young trees are more than a promise to the Kirtland’s warbler. They represent thousands of people whose loved ones chose to plant trees in their memory.

The trees were funded by Tribute Store, a Madison, Wis.-based company that provides thousands of funeral homes nationwide with the online tools needed so people can purchase gifts that express their condolences. One gift option is a “memorial” tree. Last year alone, Tribute Store supported the planting of 666,276 trees by American Forests.

Planting a tree has become an increasingly popular way to honor someone who has died, and even more so during COVID-19, when attending funerals can be difficult, says Jason Truesdell, president of FrontRunner Professional, a partnered company of Tribute Store. Some customers choose trees because they prefer a long-lasting gift that positively impacts the environment.

Traditionally, condolence gifts have been flowers. But over the years, Tribute Store noticed that their customers wanted a meaningful, longer- lasting and environmentally friendly option. Memorial trees made sense, and the company chose American Forests as its partner.

“There’s a lot in our business about trust and reputation and longevity,” Truesdell says. “There’s a lot of credibility behind the American Forests brand.”

Customers can purchase a memorial tree through the Tribute Store located on the funeral home’s website and then post about the gift on the loved one’s online obituary tribute wall.

Every six months, FrontRunner selects which American Forests planting projects to support. After plantings occur, the company notifies each purchaser of the approximate location of the tree. The trees do not have memorial plaques or identifying markers because they are planted in one of our priority threatened forest ecosystems on public lands that American Forests wants to restore to as natural a state as possible.

What they do have is the potential to offer essential benefits to both humans and wildlife. And a place where a rare bird can keep belting out its songs for years to come.

The post Partner Profile: Tribute Store provides opportunity to honor loved ones while positively impacting the environment appeared first on American Forests.

AS A NATIVE OF WASHINGTON, Santoshi Pisupati was used to a temperate climate and vast forests of lush evergreens. So, moving to South India when she was 6 was a bit of a shock. She wasn’t prepared for the outdoors she encountered.

“There were no trees in my neighborhood,” recalls Pisupati, now 15. “It was always hot, always smoky, you could never go out without a mask. It struck a nerve.”

That juxtaposition drove Pisupati to share what she knew about the environment, hoping that would inspire Indian youth to help build a more sustainable world. After her three-year experience in India, she was excited to continue pursuing her interest in the environment when she got back to Seattle.

Now a high school sophomore, Pisupati is co-leader of her school district’s Sustainability Ambassadors chapter. The nonprofit organization empowers youth to lead campaigns that encourage peers, parents and policy-makers to advance sustain- able practices. Among their projects, these students are leading a county-wide, solar neighborhood challenge in partnership with a Black-owned solar installation company that offers discounts to participants.

Pisupati and other area ambassadors are also mobilizing to call on the Lake Washington School District and its families to switch their search engines to Ecosia, a Berlin-based search engine that uses a portion of its profits to plant trees. So far, the company claims to have planted 110 million trees worldwide. That international focus resonates with Pisupati.

“When I was in India, it was very rare to see a forest. To find one, you had to go on vacation,” she says. “If you search for anything on Ecosia, you’re helping the environment.”

In addition to her love for travel and the environment, Pisupati has developed a passion for space. And that makes a lot of sense to her mother, who imagines all three of those interests melding into a fascinating future.

“The next level would be outer space,” says Sirisha Pisupati. “Some- day, maybe we’ll even make our journey to another planet. There will be sustainability needs there, too.”

The post Youth Profile: Childhood experience in India inspires high school student to become environmental ambassador appeared first on American Forests.

NEXT TIME YOU VENTURE into the woods, be sure to take your camera: American Forests’ annual Forests in Focus photo contest is back! Open to amateurs and seasoned professionals alike, the contest celebrates the wonder of trees, from those in large forest landscapes to city parks and streets.

But before you head out, Colorado-based professional photographer Jenny Nichols offers her tips on documenting nature and capturing the beauty of forests:

• One of the main challenges while photographing in a forest is the dappled light. The shadows and highlights make for a tricky exposure. But there are ways to work around that problem. Here are a few tips:
  • Keep a shallow depth of field. This allows you to have a smaller section of the forest in focus, thus increasing your chances of bringing the entire subject into focus. The soft background or circles of confusion that occur around the sharp part of the image can be beautiful.
  • If you want a wider shot, place your subject in either full shade or full sun.
  • Use a flash or reflector to even out light on your subject.
  • Embrace the dappled light and get creative with mood and story. What does it say if half of your subject’s face is in a shadow?
• Something that is very cool about photographing in a forest is the endless layers. Have fun with depth of field!
• Even in a peaceful forest, there is much happening that eludes our sight and hearing. The trees, plants and animals that make up the ecosystem are very busy. Bring a macro lens to get up close to some of those tiny features and creatures.

For more information about the Forests in Focus contest, see americanforests.org/Forests-in-Focus.

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