Florida Times-Union Editorial: “City’s Trees Have Ardent Advocates.”

On February 1, 2021, the Editorial Board of the Florida Times-Union published the following editorial crediting Greenscape as one of the oldest advocacy organizations in the country who is changing ” the city’s thinking about trees as environmental workhorses that can be leveraged by the city to improve the environment.” Please see the full editorial below.

City’s trees have ardent advocates

Our view

You may be seeing public infrastructure projects popping up
around Jacksonville. This has nothing to do with roads or
sewers. It’s about trees.

Trees are an important part of the green infrastructure of the
city, helping reduce air pollution, manage stormwater and
provide shade.

Trees are an increasingly important tool for the city as it
addresses resiliency issues like sunny day flooding and sea
level rise.

And studies find that exposure to trees has health benefits
such as stress reduction and helping create a sense of
community.

Jacksonville is lucky to have strong tree advocates.
Greenscape, one of the oldest tree advocacy organizations in
the country, celebrated its 45th anniversary last year.
Actually, it didn’t get to celebrate because of the pandemic.
It has shifted from its original focus on beautification to the
environment, says its Executive Director Anna Dooley.
It has contributed more than 350,000 trees to the city’s
canopy and encouraged residents to plant trees with tree sales
and giveaways.

And it’s been involved in a variety of plantings such as
sprucing up the city before the 2005 Super Bowl.
Their latest project is at the Jacksonville Equestrian Center on
the Westside that involves soil remediation, removal of dead
trees, repair of the irrigation system and tree plantings.
It also partners with other environmental advocates like the
new coalition Riverfront Parks Now, which as its name
suggests is advocating for riverfront parks – including trees.
Greenscape also teamed up with the Public Trust
Environmental Legal Institute, the Sierra Club and Scenic
Jacksonville to create JaxDigsTrees to support the growth and
protection of our city’s tree canopy.

It created a webtool to provide information about the canopy
to help the city decide where to plant trees.

JaxDigsTrees gives taxpayers easy access to information
about the city’s tree mitigation fund, which
is funded by developers who pay a fee every time they cut
down a tree. The fund has about $24.5 million that is spent on
planting trees on public property.

The city’s Tree Commission helps disburse the money.
The Public Trust was instrumental in the formation of the
Tree Commission, which was part of the settlement of a
lawsuit filed by the Public Trust over how the city was
disbursing the funds.

The JaxDigsTrees database has a list of all the city’s planting
projects and shows residents how to report problem trees or
question tree removals.

John Henry November, executive director of the Public Trust,
said the goal is to increase the city’s tree canopy by 40
percent by 2040.

Among the recent projects are plantings at Sulzbacher Village
on the Westside and Huguenot Memorial Park.

We’d like to advocate for a project. Studies have found that in
Chicago and Baltimore, the crime rates fell in neighborhoods
where trees had been planted.

It’s worth trying here. We’ve got high-crime neighborhoods
and a tree fund. We should consider running an experiment to
see if it really works.

Organizations like Greenscape and Public Trust are helping
change the city’s thinking about trees as are environmental
workhorses that can be leveraged by the city to improve the
environment.

Trees cannot have too many advocates. Greenscape and
Public Trust are two of the best.

We’d like to advocate for a project. Studies have found that in
Chicago and Baltimore, the crime rates fell in neighborhoods
where trees had been planted. It’s worth trying here.