Renew America Success Stories

Municipal Tree Restoration Program

Description

The Municipal Tree Restoration Program (MTRP) is a cooperative program that helps Pennsylvania communities plant, restore and care for their public trees. Through education, technical assistance and research, communities are taught how to "plant the right trees in the right places." The program also provides a limited number of commercially-grown tree species and cultivars to qualified communities in order to collect data and evaluate the trees to determine their suitability under various conditions.

Years ago, trees were planted for shade and beauty along community streets across Pennsylvania. Many of the larger trees were planted even before streets were paved, sidewalks laid and electric lines and sewer systems installed. Many of these trees were repeatedly trimmed and cut to accommodate these infrastructural changes, and the root systems of others have damaged sidewalks, curbs and storm drains. "Add to these insults exposure to air pollution, de-icing salts, and stressful urban environments, and you have a syndrome of disease that now affects most urban trees," says urban geneticist and program director Henry Gerhold.

Not only are the trees adversely affected, but the financial costs to communities with such trees are high. Each year utility companies spend millions of dollars trimming branches that interfere with power lines, and fallen trees can cause extensive property damage and delay traffic. The MTRP eliminates these costs by helping communities restore or replace trees that represent a hazard to people, property and electric lines with species that are both beautiful and appropriate for an urban environment.

The benefits of this program include more attractive business districts and residential areas, reduced energy costs for heating and cooling, cleaner air, muffling of noise, dramatically reduced costs to utilities that no longer have to prune trees and improved wildlife habitat. In addition, participating communities are encouraged to recycle leaves as mulch and to use deteriorating trees as firewood.

Program Highlights

To help communities develop their own urban forestry programs, the MTRP provides the following services:

• Tree Inventories and Plans: The MTRP will help conduct a tree inventory by species and condition as the first step in implementing a municipal tree plan that will use inventory data to determine those trees needing pruning, replacement or removal.
• Training: Through workshops, videos and home study courses, volunteers receive technical training in conducting tree inventories, pruning, hazard assessment, tree removal and disease and insect control.
• Planting, Pruning, Removal: Community volunteers are trained to help determine where trees should be planted, pruned or removed, and whether such work is best performed by a community group, utility company or tree expert.
• Grant Proposal Assistance: The MTRP can help communities prepare grant proposal to state and federal agencies for financial assistance for tree planting, worker training, park development and other urban forestry activities.
• Cultivar Evaluations: Six-year evaluations of cultivars (after transplanting) have revealed 35 species that are well-suited to survival in various street tree locations. Program organizers anticipate that within fifteen years additional information will be available to make sound decisions regarding susceptibility to disease and insects.

Vital Statistics

Program Management/Partnerships: The Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry in the Department of Environmental Resources, the United States Forest Service, Pennsylvania Electric Company, Duquesne Light, Pennsylvania Power Company, Pennsylvania Power and Light, Philadelphia Electric, Metropolitan Edison Company, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, West Penn Power and numerous local tree expert companies, including ACRT Tree Consultants, Asplundh Tree Expert Company, Bartlett Tree Expert Company and the Davey Tree Expert Company.

Budget: Approximately $4.5 million since 1987.

Community Served: Residents in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York.

Measures of Success:

An original printing of 9,000 copies of the "Street Tree Factsheet" have been sold or distributed to sponsors. A $120,000 grant from the U.S. Forest Service enabled the printing of a 19,000 copies of a second edition, with information on an additional 50 tree species for a total of 180 tree species. This factsheet is believed to have had an immense positive influence on selecting compatible trees for planting under utility wires.

Seventy-seven tree commissions have been formed within these three states, and 89 tree inventories have been conducted.

Over four years, 165 municipalities in Pennsylvania, 16 in Maryland and 10 in New York have received technical assistance from cooperating foresters or through workshops.

More than 605 individuals have attended 20 workshops.

MTRP representatives have been invited to speak at national meetings of the Society of American Foresters and the Metropolitan Tree Improvement Alliance. Numerous State forestry agencies and utility companies in other states have inquired about how they might replicate the MTRP in their own communities.

 Published: May 1997

Success stories designed by Mark W. Nowak

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