Mayor Michelle Wu has organized a coalition dedicated to providing resources to residents who have trees growing on their properties but might not be aware of how to properly care for them.
Mass Audubon will lead a group of two dozen strategic nonprofits from under-resourced communities in collaborating with residents about the tools that are needed to preserve tree growth.
“If we are serious about preserving and expanding this tree canopy, we not only have to take public efforts where we have full jurisdiction but also make sure we can provide support on private land,” Wu said Friday when announcing the creation of the Tree Alliance.
More than 60% of the city’s trees are on private land, the mayor said, and the Tree Alliance will at first focus on what environmentalists call ‘environmental justice communities,’ those that are primarily of color and have many residents below the poverty line.
“Because of redlining and systemic disinvestment,” Wu said, “tree canopy is already less dense, and the urban heat islanding effect is especially intense.
Mass Audubon President David O’Neil said too many communities are suffering from environmental justice and a nature deficit, with decades of development leading to a lack of open spaces and trails.
As open spaces became highly sought commodities during the pandemic, it showed who does and does not have access to such areas, O’Neil said. The alliance will focus on how to address that gap as well as barriers to biodiversity and effects of climate change, he said.
“It is imperative that the same people who live and work in these neighborhoods most affected by the lack of trees be the on-the-ground difference makers that drive the alliance’s work forward,” O’Neil said.
The Tree Alliance is one aspect that has come to life under Wu’s ‘Urban Forest Plan,’ an assessment of Boston’s ‘urban forest’ that carries recommendations aimed at improving the ways trees are cared for and making trees available to the entire community, according to the city.
Creating a Forestry Division within the city’s Parks and Recreation Department last September served as the first step of the ‘Urban Forest Plan.’ The office grew the city’s tree-related workforce from five to 16, and the mayor said it’s now looking to hire field crews.
The Forestry Division will continue to work on expanding the city’s tree canopy on public land, Wu said.
After Friday’s announcement at Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center in Mattapan, attendees planted seedlings for hundreds of native trees, shrubs and perennials that will transform an empty gravel lot into one of Boston’s first microforests.
“It will create a shady, accessible entrance to our wonderful 67-acre sanctuary while being a vital piece of climate resiliency for the neighborhood and a place of peace and joy,” said Pat Spence, a council member for the Mass Audubon.