About treesilience
Trees and greenspaces are an essential component of a healthy community. Healthy, long-lived trees provide the greatest benefits – including positive human health impacts – to nearby communities.
Treesilience is an initiative designed to promote healthy, resilient tree canopy in cities by proactively responding to urban forest threats. Treesilience aims to “level the planting field” for tree-planting campaigns in communities with inequitable tree canopy coverage. The initiative supports this by offsetting costs for necessary pruning and/or the removal and replacement of dead/dying trees that pose risks to homes and people, and in turn new trees can be planted in their place. While Treesilience focuses on existing trees, it also includes site preparation to open up new growing spaces for new canopy where it’s needed most. The initiative prioritizes private property, but public greenspaces are also included.
Treesilience is an initiative designed to promote healthy, resilient tree canopy in cities by proactively responding to urban forest threats. Treesilience aims to “level the planting field” for tree-planting campaigns in communities with inequitable tree canopy coverage. The initiative supports this by offsetting costs for necessary pruning and/or the removal and replacement of dead/dying trees that pose risks to homes and people, and in turn new trees can be planted in their place. While Treesilience focuses on existing trees, it also includes site preparation to open up new growing spaces for new canopy where it’s needed most. The initiative prioritizes private property, but public greenspaces are also included.
Core Principles
While Treesilience is implemented differently depending on the needs of a community, the initiative has several core principles:
- The identification of community need is conducted in partnership with community leaders;
- The identification of canopy need is conducted using the best available science/data including a tree health assessment leveraging USFS methods (Healthy Trees, Healthy Cities) when possible;
- Tree management resources are equitably distributed to help communities proactively restore their canopy or fortify canopy to withstand known and yet-to-be-identified threats;
- Whenever possible, young emerging professionals are engaged in the work, providing them with exposure to careers in arboriculture and potential employment opportunities in their communities;
- Community leaders are supported in advocacy for green infrastructure (e.g., trees), empowered to lead on tree stewardship; and
- The story of community resilience through tree canopy enhancement is told and celebrated.
for more information
Please contact John Legge at [email protected] for more information or to make a contribution to the Treesilience initiative.