The Long Lasting Legacy of Community Trees

^{Lisa Kelly:} 

^{We’re joined today by Eric North, the Arbor Day Foundation’s program manager for Urban Forestry and the leader of our Tree City USA recognition program. He’ll talk with us about the legacy and impact of community trees.} 

^{Dr. North is a former university professor and has also worked with the International Society of Arboriculture. We’re lucky to have him with us.} 

^{This has been an incredible week—and month—of Arbor Day celebration across the United States and beyond. Thanks to your support, we’ve planted more than 1 million trees. We’ve also celebrated through corporate partnerships like the NBA’s Trees for Threes promotion, and events like lighting the Empire State Building green on Earth Day to highlight the importance of trees.} 

^{We couldn’t do any of this without you.} 

^{Many of you joining us today are among our top supporters—monthly sustainers, loyal donors, major gift donors, and those who support us through the nursery. We’re truly grateful.} 

^{We’ll do Q&A at the end of Dr. North’s remarks. We received a few questions during registration, and you’re welcome to add more using the Q&A function in Zoom.} 

^{We’ll get to as many questions as we can, and we’ll follow up afterward as needed.} 

^{With that, I’ll turn it over to Dr. North.} 

^{Dr. Eric North:} 

^{Thank you, Lisa.} 

^{I want to echo what Lisa said and thank everyone for being here today.} 

^{Thank you for celebrating trees, for the work you do in your communities, and for supporting the Arbor Day Foundation. We truly can’t do this work without you.} 

^{I spent years in academia and research, and I still believe science is one of our best tools for understanding the world around us.} 

^{One example is tree rings. When you measure them, you’re really reading a story about how a tree has lived and responded to the environment around it.} 

^{But science isn’t always the best way to feel connected to the world. For connection, appreciation, and purpose, we also need history, cultural traditions, and storytelling.} 

^{Most of us have trees we love—and stories tied to them.} 

^{Here’s a photo of me when I was younger. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, and it was obvious early on that sports weren’t going to be my thing. I was much more interested in science and nature.} 

^{Near the house I grew up in, I planted two silver maples. I found little sprouts in a nearby garden, moved them, and planted them there. Years later, I checked on them in Google Earth—and they were still standing.} 

^{I’ve had a soft spot for silver maples ever since.} 

^{Silver maple isn’t on most people’s list of “awe-inspiring” trees, but in the right place it can be wonderful. I like looking for the overlooked parts of familiar trees—and for silver maple, that’s the flowers.} 

^{Those clustered buds you see on the twigs are where the flowers show up in spring. As the buds swell, they open into these little red “ribbons”—the emerging flowers. They’re not big and showy, but they’re unique, and they’re worth a closer look.} 

^{If you’ve never paid attention to tree flowers before, consider this an invitation to join the club.} 

^{I’m not the only one who likes silver maple. In The Land Remembers, author Ben Logan tells a story about a silver maple outside his family’s house in Wisconsin. His father wanted to cut it down for practical reasons—it blocked wind from the windmill, made the house darker, and could drop a limb. His mother wanted to keep it for the shade and the way it brought the family together on summer nights. The father finally put the boys to work with a saw, but they quickly decided they were “too tired” to keep cutting—so the tree stayed. Decades later, Logan returned to the farm and the tree was still there. It finally came down in 1996, taken by a tornado, after living well over 100 years.} 

^{I’ve always loved people’s stories about trees. Let me share a few about the legacy of trees—and how they’ve helped shape the United States.} 

^{Community Trees in U.S. History} 

^{If you think about where early U.S. cities were built, many were located near rivers—partly to support logging and milling.} 

^{For the men floating logs downriver, it was dangerous work. This photo is from Wisconsin’s St. Croix River, along the border with Minnesota.} 

^{Logjams like this weren’t uncommon. When they happened, loggers—those small figures standing on the mass of logs—would wedge dynamite into the pile and then try to scramble to shore while everything shifted and bobbed in the current.} 

^{It was as risky as it sounds: the dynamite would blow, and logs could be tossed into the air.} 

^{Just past the bridge, there’s a tree still standing—an eastern white pine.} 

^{Eastern white pine holds an important place in U.S. history.} 

^{It’s one of the largest conifers in the Northeast—often around 100 feet tall and about 3 feet in diameter.} 

^{Its historic range is mostly in the colder parts of the eastern U.S. and Canada.} 

^{Here in Minnesota, I see eastern white pine all the time—especially up north in places like the Boundary Waters, where you can spot them rising above the surrounding forest.} 

^{Eastern white pine also played a role in European expansion into North America. Europe was facing a timber shortage and needed tall, straight trees to build naval fleets.} 

^{An archdeacon at London’s Westminster Abbey persuaded King James I that the colonies had an “unlimited supply” of trees. Eastern white pine stood out for its height and massive, straight trunks—ideal for ship masts.} 

^{Oak was often used for ship hulls, but masts needed tall, sturdy pines—strong and flexible enough to handle wind and waves.} 

^{In 1691, eastern white pines over 2 feet in diameter were marked with the king’s “broad arrow” and claimed for the Crown.} 

^{Colonists weren’t thrilled. There are stories—part myth, part truth—that some people would cut large pines and mill them down to about 22 inches, just under the 2-foot threshold, to avoid suspicion.} 

^{Any of those trees that were marked were claimed for the crown. And the colonists were not really very happy about this, and so there are stories, I'm not sure if they're true or just myth, of people that would cut down massive trees and then mill them to, like.} 

^{22 inches, just shy of that 2 feet, so that if anybody came looking around, they wouldn't be suspicious that they had cut one of the king's trees.} 

^{So while eastern white pine helped build the British Navy, it also helped fuel resentment that fed into the American Revolution.} 

^{Another tree that became an American symbol is the apple. The apples most of us eat come from Malus domestica, a domesticated species that originated in Central Asia and was brought to North America in the 1600s.} 

^{North America also has several native crab apple species. People don’t usually grow them for eating, but they’re valued for their flowers and the wildlife benefits they bring.} 

^{Apple and crab apple blossoms support pollinators, and their fruit can hang on into winter—providing food for birds and other wildlife.} 

^{Apples are also fascinating because they don’t breed true from seed. If you plant the seeds from a Honeycrisp, you won’t grow another Honeycrisp—you’ll get something different.} 

^{That’s why apple varieties are propagated by cloning (grafting). When you buy a Honeycrisp tree, you’re planting a clone of the original.} 

^{European settlers loved apples. In some places, land developers even required settlers to plant fruit trees—often specifying apples.} 

^{Much of that enthusiasm wasn’t about pie—it was about hard cider. In many areas, cider was safer to drink than local water, so it became a staple.} 

^{In the late 1700s, John Chapman—better known as Johnny Appleseed—helped spread apple orchards across the eastern U.S. and into what was then the frontier. He was a nurseryman at heart, planting as he traveled.} 

^{was a nurseryman at heart. He loved plants, and he loved apples in particular, and he planted apple orchards all up and down the eastern states, and explored and planted Ever West.} 

^{And that's where he died was in at the time, Western, which would have been Ohio, Indiana. That's about as far as he made it. And he was planting apple trees and apple seeds as he went.} 

^{Poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant captured that era of expansion and change, and he also believed people deserved access to beautiful landscapes and green space.} 

^{As cities grew, people recognized the need for trees and parks in crowded urban areas. Around that time, a new American idea started to take shape: public urban parks.} 

^{The story of Central Park begins in 1844, when Bryant urged the country to create a grand public “pleasure ground.” At the time, many green spaces—especially in Europe—were reserved for elites, so the idea of a park for everyone was unusual.} 

^{Frederick Law Olmsted was ultimately selected to design the park—before landscape architecture was even a formal discipline.} 

^{what would become Central Park. Now, keep in mind, landscape architecture was not yet a formal discipline.} 

^{Central Park spans about two and a half miles long and a half mile wide—more than 800 acres of prime real estate in the middle of New York City.} 

^{Olmsted had a great eye for design, and the park’s planting work was massive—more than 240,000 trees were planted between 1859 and 1863.} 

^{Olmsted also wanted to quantify the economic value of parks. During construction, he tracked nearby real estate values as an early way to show parks pay back communities.} 

^{Even when Central Park was only half finished, surrounding land values were already rising. One study estimated that if nearby land values doubled, the increase would be about $53 million—but an appraisal put it over $236 million (in 1860 dollars).} 

^{Actually, when it was appraised, it was over $236 million, and this was in 1860, so you can just imagine the value and worth of that land monetarily in today's world.} 

^{We still study the value of trees today—from measurable benefits like energy savings and stormwater reduction to harder-to-quantify benefits like health, comfort, and peace of mind.} 

^{Around the same time, something else was happening in a place you might not expect: Nebraska.} 

^{In 1855, J. Sterling Morton looked around his Nebraska homestead and noticed the lack of trees. He started planting, and in 1872 he proposed a new tree-planting holiday: Arbor Day.} 

^{Arbor Day later spread well beyond Nebraska and is now celebrated around the world—at different times of year depending on climate.} 

^{The first Arbor Day was celebrated in Nebraska on April 10, 1872. Prizes were offered to individuals and counties that planted the most trees, and it’s estimated more than a million trees were planted that day.} 

^{About 100 years after that first Arbor Day, the Arbor Day Foundation was created in Nebraska to carry those ideals forward—helping people plant, nurture, and celebrate trees.} 

^{It’s also interesting that Nebraska was officially known as the “Tree Planter State” from 1895 to 1945—a name you can find in historical documents from that era.} 

^{About 20 years after the first Arbor Day, the Vanderbilt family hired a young Gifford Pinchot to practice forestry on their Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. At the time, forestry as a profession was still developing in North America.} 

^{Pinchot saw a problem with the “cut and move on” approach of some timber operations—harvesting forests without replanting or long-term management.} 

^{He later became the first chief of the newly formed U.S. Forest Service, serving from 1905 to 1910, and pushed a conservation philosophy focused on sustained, renewable timber production.} 

^{without any real thought of replanting or managing that forest resource over the long run.} 

^{taking all of that and studying some more, Gifford Pinchot became the first.} 

^{chief of the newly formed U.S. Forest Service, where he served from 1905 until 1910.} 

^{Pinchot had a really strong hand in guiding the organization toward a utilitarian philosophy that supported conservation.} 

^{In practical terms, that meant harvesting forests—and replanting—so timber could remain a renewable resource for a growing nation.} 

^{He also emphasized research, establishing stations to study how to manage forests effectively through science and practice.} 

^{Pinchot’s approach is often summarized by the phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number”—and later, “in the long run,” to emphasize that forestry decisions play out over decades and even centuries.} 

^{He later added the phrase, in the long run, to emphasize that forest management consists of long-term decisions, and long-term decisions really, in forestry, are decades to centuries.} 

^{John Muir, the naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, offered a different perspective and helped shape the early national park movement.} 

^{After returning from Yosemite, Muir wrote: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread—places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.”} 

^{Pinchot and Muir approached forests differently, but for a time they were friends—and their ideas influenced the institutions they helped shape.} 

^{Together, the national park system and the U.S. Forest Service became influential models for managing natural resources—balancing multiple uses, conservation, and scientific research.} 

^{Another tree with a big legacy in the eastern U.S. is the American chestnut. Many people know it from the line “chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”} 

^{That song (“The Christmas Song”) was written in 1945 by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells and popularized by Nat King Cole. The story goes they wrote it during a hot spell, imagining winter to cool themselves down.} 

^{For generations, the American chestnut was a major part of life in the eastern forests—valued for its nuts, its timber, and the deep shade it provided.} 

^{the time, probably especially in their youth. So while John Muir was exploring the western forest, people from all walks of life in the eastern forest were exploring and enjoying and relying on the multiple uses of the American chestnut.} 

^{Those sweet nuts weren’t just a seasonal treat—they helped families get through harsh winters.} 

^{Chestnuts could be enormous trees, dominating large parts of the eastern forest.} 

^{And these treats largely dominated the eastern forest range, and the range you can see here in the map in green.} 

^{It was said that a squirrel could travel from New York all the way to Georgia by the canopy of chestnuts alone. They were so thick in the forest.} 

^{Now, in 1904, around the time that Pinchot was getting started at the US Forest Service, something strange was happening at the Bronx Zoo.} 

^{Herman Merkel, a forester at the zoo, noticed diseased cankers on the American chestnuts planted throughout the zoo.} 

^{The cankers turned out to be a fungus that we now know as chestnut blight.} 

^{The spores are disseminated by wind, making containment all but impossible.} 

^{And within about 50 years, the American chestnuts were no longer a significant component of the Eastern forests.} 

^{However, the American chestnut and chestnut blight did not go extinct. Chestnuts have this amazing ability to sprout from their stumps.} 

^{Unfortunately, the disease can also persist on those stumps and those sprouts.} 

^{And so, you don't see chestnuts or American chestnuts.} 

^{It being these massive trees are a major component of forests, because few, if any, reach mature size in their natural range.} 

^{Not to give up too much hope, but organizations continue to work on breeding resilient trees. Sometimes it's a mix of American and Asian varieties. Sometimes it's just looking for resistance or genetic traits that can resist the disease.} 

^{And so you can still get and work with and find American chestnuts, but they're pretty rare. And I've seen a few here in Minnesota, but the disease often still reaches them. So still around, and.} 

^{continue to hope that research will help us find a great American chestnut.} 

^{Around the time that the forestry, the chestnut blight was happening and the US Forest Service was getting up and running.} 

^{The. and cities were developing their parks, modern arboriculture was also on the rise. I love these two images. The image on the left with all these men in these trees, and you've got ladders and ropes and saws, and I've climbed trees, and I've taught students how to climb trees. It's a lot of work, even with today's modern gear.} 

^{Can only imagine what it was like to climb on the gear they had and to be up in these tiny branches. And this picture of the truck.} 

^{To the right, this was actually for disease and insects to control that.} 

^{Oh. big kind of… Contraption on the back there, that was for spraying out a fog all over the trees. Whether you were standing there or not, and that fog was… had pesticide in it. So, fortunately, we've gotten far past just spraying fog and fogging trees to kill insects.} 

^{and professionals and researchers continue to work in tree care, in a bore culture, in urban forestry to improve our best practices, to improve our equipment, and improve our science of managing trees throughout our landscapes.} 

^{In the 1930s there was a Dust Bowl. And it was brought on due to droughts, winds, and a lack of soil conservation.} 

^{So once again, Nebraska plays an important role here in the legacy of trees in the United States. FDR started the New Deal project in the 1930s, and he proposed as part of that a great wall of trees.} 

^{And so from 1935 until about 1942. He had… FDR had his tree army, which was made up of civilian Conservation Corps and works progress administration workers, and they planted over 220 million trees along 1,300-mile zone bisecting the Great Plains from Canada all the way down into.} 

^{Texas. Trees were planted as windbreaks or shelter belts, and they… really demonstrated as a viable solution for farming conditions by slowing the wind and reducing soil erosion, along with many other benefits.} 

^{There's a great book, and I'm not sure if it's still in print by Sarah and David. It's the cover here on this slide, Conserving the Dust Bowl. These are two landscape.} 

^{architecture researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and they've dug through lots of great archives to build this story.} 

^{Shelter belts and other techniques are collectively known as agroforestry. In fact, the National Agroforestry Center is located in Lincoln, Nebraska, just a few miles away from the Arbor Day Foundation, and they do valuable research.} 

^{Um, along with the University of Nebraska on continuing agroforestry.} 

^{Both with windbreaks and the many other services that benefit people and society.} 

^{The American elm. is iconic, really, for lining our U.S. Streets, parks, boulevards.} 

^{But it's funny when you read accounts by foresters, they considered this the most useless piece of vegetation in our forests.} 

^{Its wood was difficult to split, it didn't burn particularly well, and anything made of its wood would just kind of warp and twist.} 

^{Foresters hated this tree. And you can see from this map, it's historic range.} 

^{It covered much of the East.} 

^{But, urban foresters and arborists really came to love the elm, because it was easy to transplant, and it tolerated really tough urban conditions. If you look at this photo on the left.} 

^{These are… three men that are planting this tree, and they've dug a hole that is way too deep. This is not the way we recommend you plant trees today. And they're in the hole with the tree, and this tree, you can see just the size of a hand.} 

^{That means that that trunk is somewhere between where he's gripping, it is probably about 7 to 8 inches in diameter. This is an enormous tree that they've lifted into this hole, and there's no machinery around them. So they've cut off almost all the roots, they've dug a hole too deep, they're piling soil on top of it.} 

^{And this is planted on the University of Minnesota campus. Now, the picture to the right is a core sample, meaning I drilled out a small section and took out the wood, and we wanted to see if this elm that is still on the campus today is the same one from this photograph. And indeed, we were able to count the rings.} 

^{And go back to when this photograph was dated in 1909 to determine that, yeah, that was still the same tree there today. So… hundreds of thousands of elms were planted throughout U.S. Cities because of its ability to handle.} 

^{Now… While the Great Plains were dealing with the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, foresters in Baltimore, Maryland noticed elm logs infested with beetles, and they appeared diseased.} 

^{The Dutch elm disease was first isolated scientifically by Dutch pathologist Marie Scholz Schwartz and Christine Boozman. In the 1920s, but largely because they were women scientists, their work was ignored, which delayed treatment.} 

^{They realized early on that the disease was a fungus that caused a vascular wilt, and it was spread via the elm bark beetle, both native and non-native varieties, and it can also spread via grafted roots.} 

^{Once their work was finally acknowledged. work on treatments and management proceeded fairly rapidly.} 

^{But because of the elm's popularity as a city tree, cities like Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I am right now, Elms made up over 90% of all urban trees planted.} 

^{And you can see the devastation when those elms are gone. It really changed the landscape from shaded to no shaded very quickly in just a matter of a few years. And by the 1960s, treatment was possible, but it was difficult, it was expensive, and tens of thousands.} 

^{trees were already being removed or needed to be removed.} 

^{In fact, I've been reviewing Tree City USA applications from the very first year in 1976, and almost all of them.} 

^{report some work with Dutch elm disease in their communities. So this was really a big deal across the nation.} 

^{Now, Dutch Elm disease is really an interesting case to me that gives us hope because it demonstrates this galvanizing experience of people working together to address a crisis.} 

^{Through the collaborative work of scientists and horticulturists and tree growers, arborists, urban foresters.} 

^{And even community members, some trees had been saved, some trees were found to be naturally resistant.} 

^{And new elm hybrids have been created and developed, along with treatments for the disease.} 

^{These… this picture here is of two elms, mature elms, that are in a park, just maybe 2 blocks from my house, and they're really a testament.} 

^{That every failure is an opportunity to learn. One of the things we learned was not only how to treat and grow different trees, but also how to diversify our urban forests so they are less susceptible.} 

^{to a single disease or a single event. So while dealing with the losses from Dutch elm disease, the nation was beginning.} 

^{to realize and really feel the benefits and value of community trees beyond just their beauty.} 

^{this newly founded Arbor Day Foundation, in collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters developed the Tree City USA program in 1976.} 

^{on the Bicentennial of the nation. A nation that was, by the way, largely built on its forests and its trees. And the Tree City USA program was designed to raise awareness of the value that trees bring to our communities by providing a foundation of community forestry.} 

^{through the four standards of the program. And the program was created so that communities of any size could participate.} 

^{And today, we have… we love to talk about Sibley, North Dakota, with just 20 people is a tree city. and New York City. Is a tree city with over 8 million people.} 

^{In its first year, there were 42 cities. In 16 states that were recognized as Tree City.} 

^{Now, 50 years later, on the 50th anniversary of the Tree City USA program, there are over 3,600 communities in all 50 states, including Washington, D.C, and in Puerto Rico.} 

^{This program continues to raise awareness of the value of community trees.} 

^{And to recognize communities that meet or exceed the program's foundational standards.} 

^{Excuse me. Trees are really a truly amazing natural resource, both for humans and for wildlife.} 

^{And as we continue to develop our cities, and we continue to manage forests, conflicts with wildlife are just… they're inevitable.} 

^{And this book, The Final Forest, is a true account.} 

^{of the struggle between logging and ecology and the spotted owl.} 

^{This takes place largely in the 70s, 80s. And it takes place in Forks, Washington.} 

^{among the old-growth forests, and forks, Washington, that area is a temperate rainforest, so these are massive trees, dense forests.} 

^{In old-growth forests are really unique. And they're more than simply large, old trees. They are ecosystems that have taken hundreds to thousands of years to develop and grow into what they are.} 

^{And once they're lost, unfortunately, they cannot be recovered.} 

^{If we replant, we can grow something new, but that original old growth and all of the things that were part of that ecosystem can't be recovered. So, protecting them can be very valuable.} 

^{And I think the author of this book does a wonderful job portraying the humanity, meaning the struggle of.} 

^{between preservation, conservation, and meeting the demands of forest products. It doesn't demonize people that are creating… that are logging trees to create the timber products we all use. I live in a treehouse, meaning my house is made of.} 

^{primarily timber and wood, so it's very important, and I think the author here does a really nice job of laying out the complexities of managing forest systems, which is why we rely so heavily on science, research, and professionals.} 

^{in managing our natural resources. Now, for a nation.} 

^{with so many wonderful trees and a rich history of forests and a reliance on trees as a natural resource, it is… kind of surprising that the US didn't have an official national tree until 2004.} 

^{Now, the Arbor Day Foundation was very proud and happy to be part of this and lead the effort to survey Americans and figure out what they thought should be our national tree.} 

^{And it turned out to be oak. Not a particular oak, but oak.} 

^{In a general sense. Oaks are pretty awe-inspiring in their variety and their form. They belong to the beach family, and they're in the genus Quercus. There are oaks that are native to, I think, about 47 out of our 50 states.} 

^{With around 400 species, probably more worldwide, most of them in the Northern Hemisphere, and about 90 of those are native to North America.} 

^{I had a forestry professor that described oaks as being highly promiscuous, which really just means that they, within certain groups, oaks will change pollen even if it's a different species, leading to a wide variety of form, shape, and especially leaves.} 

^{So here you see 3 different oak species, all with different leaf shapes, both lobed and unlobed, rounded lobes, pointed lobes, or flat-sided. They're both.} 

^{assiduous and evergreen. Oaks, really a very versatile tree, both in form, they are shrubs, and there are massive trees.} 

^{Um, and versatile in its products that we can create from it.} 

^{Oak was used heavily in the shipbuilding industry due to its incredible strength in the USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, had a hull made of live oak from the southern U.S. And while most oak species are not particularly.} 

^{known to be quick growers. They promise some endurance.} 

^{In fact, the ship named… Endurance was used by Ernest Shackleton to reach the Antarctic, and it was built with a hull and keel made of oak, with a thickness that ranged somewhere between about 18 inches to over 4 feet thick.} 

^{And Oaks, in my mind, continue to stand as nature's practical, but really stately trees in our forests, parks, and even in our yards. And they're a great symbol of strength and longevity.} 

^{Because they bend, but rarely break, making oak a hopeful symbol for a nation.} 

^{Trees inspire us. They've inspired a lot of poets to put pen to paper.} 

^{And I particularly like this excerpt from Ada Lamon's Ancestors.} 

^{I've come here from the trees, Chestnut, bay laurel, toyan, acacia, redwood, cedar, 1,000 oaks.} 

^{Imagine you must survive without running. I love that line. Imagine you must survive without running. It reminds us that in our modern world, where we're building and changing landscapes, that we play a part in helping trees survive when they can't escape to some new location.} 

^{As I wrap up here, I want to acknowledge that I've only relayed part of the story. There's lots to tell.} 

^{And the story of trees and forests in North America, there is a rich and complex history.} 

^{of forest management by Native Americans. I'm just really not qualified to tell that story.} 

^{But that in no way means that it's less important or not valuable.} 

^{There are many. valuable lessons we can draw from traditional ecological knowledge and the systems that were set up before Europeans came to this continent.} 

^{There are many great writers and researchers that have captured these stories and techniques and are more qualified to explain or tell that story than I am, and I encourage you to seek out their works and learn more about.} 

^{Indigenous knowledge and cultures and how it relates to our forests, trees, and management.} 

^{All right, I've told a bunch of stories about the value of trees and some of the history of our forests here in the U.S.} 

^{And the Arbor Day Foundation has been collecting stories from folks like you. Maybe you've even contributed some of these stories, and they are really fun to read and look through.} 

^{And I invite you to do so if you haven't seen this already, to look through some of these stories. They can be inspiring, thoughtful, some of them bring a tear to your eye, and I know if you haven't shared a story, I know that we'd love to read those, see those, and so I invite you to.} 

^{Read other people's stories, share with your friends, and if you have a story you'd like to share.} 

^{I invite you to do so.} 

^{I'll leave you with this. What if? I really like what if because it's such a powerful concept.} 

^{That allows us to imagine something different, something more.} 

^{What if we all were doing something to make our yards, our communities, states, nations… plan it a little bit better. That's really what Arbor Day and the Foundation is about.} 

^{Forward-thinking. Plant trees today for something better tomorrow. And I… if you're like me, we live in a very complicated world.} 

^{Where the news, uh, can make it difficult to stay positive, to say the least.} 

^{But we at the Foundation continue to work with people who choose to be hopeful.} 

^{to show up and to do the work to imagine a better future.} 

^{So what if…} 

^{I rely on a lot of books I love to read. I love to learn new things, and these are just a few that helped informed this presentation, this talk. I believe they'll be shared out with you later, and I have others that I shared out last year when I gave a talk that might also be of interest to you.} 

^{With that, thank you so much for attending. I've been my pleasure to talk with you. I wish we were all in person and we could sit down and chat afterward. I think we'll have a little bit of time here for some questions.} 

^{Our work depends on folks like you, so thank you so much for all you do now and in the future.} 

^{Lisa Kelly:} 

^{Thank you so much, Dr. North. We really appreciate your presentation already. We've gotten some feedback on your presentation, so thank you so much for your time.} 

^{We've gotten a few questions that I've answered in the Q&A, but as a reminder, if you have a question that you haven't already submitted, you're welcome to submit one through the Q&A.} 

^{The first question, Dr. North, how late is too late to plant dormant trees or shrubs?} 

^{Dr. Eric North:} 

^{Um, well, if they're fully dormant, you can plant them as long as you can still dig into the ground.} 

^{Once a tree has gone dormant, it's all ready for whatever it's going dormant for. So here in Minnesota, if a dormant tree means it's ready for the winter, and so I can plant it.} 

^{If it's pretty cold out, even if all the other leaves, as long as I can get a shovel on the ground.} 

^{I would say that you'd want to keep it watered to make sure that those roots stay hydrated. Plus, when you water the soil as the ground freezes, it actually creates a protective ice barrier there that prevents the really, really cold.} 

^{depth of air. If there's a snowless winter or low snow cover from getting all the way down. Roots are not as cold-tolerant as the above-ground portion of the tree, so you want to protect those.} 

^{Lisa Kelly:} 

^{That is incredible. I would have never thought of ice to protect tree roots.} 

^{That is so cool. Another question, I am interested in learning more about the economic impacts, as well as community building that can be directly linked to a robust and thriving urban tree canopy.} 

^{Dr. Eric North:} 

^{Yeah, okay, complicated question. The economic impacts, there's lots of great studies that have come out, and the one of the best places, I think, to look for those, or look for good information is going to your local extension office or your forestry, um.} 

^{Office within your state. Of course, we at the Foundation also have lots of resources, but they might not pertain to your particular state. We tend to take a more national or global view.} 

^{Um, the getting involved in your community is such a great thing. I always remind people.} 

^{I work in what we call urban forestry or known more broadly as urban and community forestry. I've always loved the name community forestry because it reminds us that.} 

^{Whether or not I'm a professional with trees and know how to work with them, I still have a voice, because those trees impact me, and getting involved on your local tree board, seeing if there's a local nonprofit that works with trees that you can either volunteer with, or if you're looking for a new job or a change of career.} 

^{You know, maybe they're hiring. Lots of great ways to get involved.} 

^{When you see things that are happening that you like, you should make sure to tell people, your decision makers, if your elected officials in your community, your state, all the way up.} 

^{Let them know that you appreciate those efforts. When there's stuff that you don't like, you should also make sure you're letting your local officials know, and making sure that you're communicating what works for you and what doesn't work for you within your community.} 

^{Lisa Kelly:} 

^{Thank you. We also have a website on the arborday.org website. It's arborday.org slash value that has some additional information about the value of trees, as well as a calculator where you can learn more about the specific benefits a tree might have.} 

^{In your zip code. Another question that came in was related to urban tree canopy in areas of concentrated poverty, and how to overcome community, potential community objections to trees due to concerns about costs of tree maintenance, potential costs of trees falling, or things of that nature.} 

^{Dr. Eric North:} 

^{Yeah, I think that's a great question. And clearly you're thinking about how both the community and the trees can be successful. One of the things I do when I work with urban forestry professionals is to remind them it's not about the tree, it's about the people.} 

^{And you should keep that in mind. If you're working in a community that has been maybe ignored.} 

^{or underplanted for a variety of reasons. It means they might not also have other services or things that are priorities, and so making sure you don't come in and just say, we're going to plant a bunch of trees, but instead start building relationships and working with those communities.} 

^{to figure out what they need, how they can be involved.} 

^{We've seen from study after study that people that are involved.} 

^{In the work that happens in their community are more invested because you've asked what they want, what they see, what they need, instead of coming in and telling them, you need this, because your needs and their needs might not align the same way.} 

^{And so you have to really think about that. I've had a few personal stories over the years that.} 

^{have been really interesting examples of big shade trees being planted over a community, and the community cutting them down, and the forester being really upset, and it turned out it was a community that really wanted to plant gardens and grow their own food, and so what they would have.} 

^{preferred was fruit trees, and so after that initial interaction, the forester, nice guy, just said, why'd you cut down our trees? And they said, "Well, if you'd asked us, we would have said, could we get some apple trees or pear trees or cherry trees because food is really important. So just even having that level of understanding.} 

^{Um, he was thinking shade, they were thinking, this is shading out our gardens. So, competing priorities, always best to try and understand those things.} 

^{Lisa Kelly:} 

^{Thank you. A question from the chat. Do you recommend removing the Tree of Heaven to thwart the growth of lanternflies?} 

^{Dr. Eric North:} 

^{Oh, the tree of heaven. Thankfully, not a problem here in Minnesota, at least not yet. It is, for those that don't know, the Tree of Heaven was brought over, I think, in the 1700s into the eastern U.S, and it is native, I believe, to China, and it has become a.} 

^{pretty widely known invasive tree. And so, um… I think if you need to remove those trees to control another insect, which is also invasive. That's probably an okay thing to do.} 

^{removal of trees is always really challenging because those trees, even invasive trees, as an urban forester, I might go, oh, that's a terrible tree, we should remove it, but the community might still be getting lots of benefit. So instead of just going into communities and completely removing everything and saying, I know better than you, it's always best.} 

^{where and when you can to try and hold public hearings, meetings, even if you can't… even if you're going to end up removing the trees, at least being able to explain why and how, and maybe there's some way to replant something else that's more favorable in their place.} 

^{Um, and give other options to people, I think, is a good way to go.} 

^{Lisa Kelly:} 

^{Thank you. Linda Cummings asks, I see beautiful, mature and healthy trees dying after neighbors have sprayed for mosquitoes.} 

^{Is there a connection? I'm not very much about?} 

^{I will say that I don't know. It depends upon, I guess, what they're spraying for mosquitoes. It would be unusual that if it's a chemical that.} 

^{kills an insect that a plant would be very heavily impacted by it, just because the biological differences between plants and animals or plants and insects.} 

^{Um, they might be… if they're spraying for insects, they might be doing other things that you can't see.} 

^{So I I would suspect that it might not be directly related, but it might be other management things that are happening along with that at the same time that maybe you're just not seeing. And it is possible, I haven't… I don't know, I have… it's not an area that I've researched, so I'm not sure.} 

^{So there's a small chance that it could be the sprain, but it seems more likely that it's something else that's happening at the same time.} 

^{Lisa Kelly:} 

^{Thank you. We've gotten a handful of questions related to tree canopy and how Arbor Day Foundation is measuring or assessing or looking at tree canopy, whether cities have tree canopy goals.} 

^{Anything you'd like to share related to canopy?} 

^{Dr. Eric North:} 

^{Yeah, so for our recognition programs like Tree City USA and Tree Campus programs, we don't require or monitor tree canopy for those. There's just.} 

^{Quite frankly, there's far too many, and we don't penalize communities for changes in tree canopy for some very practical reasons, like we had a bunch of tree cities that were impacted by Hurricane Helene or the fires, and through no fault of their management, their canopies just.} 

^{Went down and it will take time for those to rebuild, and so we don't want to penalize communities for that.} 

^{Um, in terms of resources that we have, we partnered with the U.S. Forest Service, a company called Planet Geo, to create treesatwork.org.} 

^{And I believe someone will throw that link in the chat, or it will be in the email going out. And on that site are great resources. We mapped, I believe it's every community.} 

^{a thousand people or more, we looked at their historic canopy between two different timeframes and mapped canopy down to the census block level, which is a pretty fine scale, so that you can see canopy changes over time.} 

^{And those have some downloadable data sets, which professionals in your community can use, or at your state, or if you're part of a tree care company, those are available to look at so you can play with the data and see how you can build it into other management tools you might have.} 

^{And that's one of the ways that we're helping communities make decisions for how to restore, or what areas to even look at that should be prioritized for tree canopy.} 

^{Lisa Kelly:} 

^{Thank you. Thank you again, Dr. North. Thank you to all of our guests for joining us today and for your support of our mission to inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees.} 

^{The recording of today's presentation will be sent later this week, along with some of the resources that Dr. North referenced, including his book recommendations.} 

^{If you have any feedback on today's webinar or topics that you would like to see us discuss in future webinars, please don't hesitate to reach out to us.} 

^{And if you would like to join us in celebrating this Arbor Day holiday through a donation to continue supporting our work, we always welcome your support.} 

^{Again, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for all you do, and happy Arbor Day.}