Seattle can’t protect its urban forest without a census of its largest trees

It is a important second for Seattle’s city forest, as our Metropolis Council members put together to vote on an up to date tree safety ordinance subsequent week. We all know that Seattle’s bushes — particularly our largest bushes that present lifesaving cover protection, alongside many different well being and environmental advantages — are in steep decline. However whereas it’s generally assumed we all know the form of the issue and have concepts on learn how to repair it, we needs to be questioning the assumptions that this new ordinance will bake into regulation.

Now’s the time to ensure the ordinance is amended in order that it’s a fit-for-purpose instrument in Seattle’s combat to develop housing and protect giant bushes. However how can the general public probably make good choices with out figuring out the fundamental info in regards to the assets we now have?

What number of giant bushes does Seattle even have? This lacking info is a stunning hole on the coronary heart of the present policymaking effort, and it means the ordinance shouldn’t be being knowledgeable by all of the info.

Up to now, we now have needed to depend on tree cover research launched by town for details about what number of bushes we now have. However cover research primarily based on aerial applied sciences are an incomplete supply of data and never an alternative to a discipline methodology that appears at species, well being and dimension. 

We’re each volunteers of the Last 6000 Campaign, which was began to doc the 6,338 bushes left within the metropolis with trunk diameters of 30 inches and better. Volunteers from each neighborhood submitted pictures and knowledge. In 2021, we reported to the Columbia Metropolis and Beacon Hill neighborhoods on the majestic bushes we had surveyed there to this point — greater than 310 in complete, of which 66% had been positioned on personal property. Our grassroots survey was distinctive as a result of we had been capable of get concrete info on the place the most important bushes are positioned, together with an image of the combo of tree species.

Though town has reported to Seattle’s City Forestry Fee that we presently have 968,000 bushes (600,988 are in Neighborhood Residential Zones), there is no such thing as a simply obtainable metric of the dimensions of bushes inside the depend. By way of some digging, we present in a Metropolis of Seattle Listening to Examiner choice on a Grasp Builders Affiliation attraction an announcement that there have been about 21,000 bushes with trunk diameters between 24 and 29 inches on 7,700 growth websites in Neighborhood Residential Zones.  

What will occur to those giant bushes which might be offering invaluable advantages in neighborhoods the place folks dwell when protections are utterly eliminated for growth underneath the proposed tree safety ordinance?

Beneath the present draft:

• Lot protection ensures are elevated in order that solely 2½ ft of earth is left alongside buildings — not sufficient area for mature bushes to outlive. Do we actually need giant wholesome Douglas Firs changed by small decorative bushes?

• Giant bushes will be lower down with minimal charges primarily based on sapling substitute prices. Why is there no valuation of the environmental, well being and fairness advantages that enormous bushes present?

We consider we will defend giant bushes and develop housing. It isn’t an either-or proposition. That’s the reason we assist the efforts and amendments of the City Forestry Fee to deal with these inquiries to the Metropolis Council as members think about the brand new tree safety ordinance.

At a elementary stage, Seattle wants a tree census effort to be expanded and formalized by town, so we now have an entire view of our giant bushes, their species and their well being standing. In any other case, we’re flying with out devices as we make consequential choices about the way forward for our metropolis’s tree safety efforts.