Michelle Sutton

Partnerships, Fruit Trees, and Land Restoration in the Peruvian Amazon, with James Kaechele

In his capacity as Arborist for the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, James Kaechele demonstrated how to properly plant a limón sutil tree (Citrus aurantifolia) to a community in the Peruvian Amazon.

All Photos Courtesy James Kaechele & Fruit Tree Planting Foundation

What skills does an urban forester use when planting trees on disturbed land along an Amazon River tributary? “All of them,” says New York Tree Trust Director and Council Executive Committee Member James Kaechele. In early December, 2019, Kaechele, also a consulting arborist for the Pittsburgh-based international charity Fruit Tree Planting Foundation (FTPF), went with a team of staff and volunteers to the Loreta Region of Peru to plant 6,000 fruit trees in five Amazon River communities.

“As urban foresters, our job is equal parts plants and people,” Kaechele says. “We’re uniquely positioned to coordinate both the arboricultural and human aspects of a project like this. The land-use questions are the same; the site assessment process is the same; tree planting techniques are the same; you have to address any concerns people have—for example, the worry that some have about whether a tree will fall on their house—it’s the same skills that I use in the work I do with street trees and residents in NYC.” Furthermore, the land along the Amazon River is often severely degraded and in need of restoration, just like in the tree beds, parks, and natural areas of NYC—just degraded for different reasons.

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2020 Community Resilience Grants for Tree City USA Communities

News from the Arbor Day Foundation

2020 Bank of America Community Resilience Grant Application is Now Live!

For existing Tree City USA communities 

Applications due Feb 21, 2020

From ADF:

Thank you for your continued dedication to the health of your community forest and participation in the Tree City USA program. We want to make you aware of a special grant opportunity focused on community resilience, available exclusively for recognized Tree City USA communities. The deadline for application is February 21st, 2020 – read on to learn more and apply. 

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American Chestnut Update: Big Funding News, Public Comment Needed, Seed Engraving, and a Podcast

(Above) Sergey Jivetin creates elaborate engravings on the shells of seeds, including a series carved on American chestnut seeds depicting The American Chestnut Foundation’s restoration efforts. One nut (enlarged) illustrates the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project’s insertion of the oxalate oxidase gene into the American chestnut genome. To see more of Sergey Jivetin’s work, check out his website, Furrow Seed Engraving Project.

Major Gift to SUNY-ESF Chestnut Restoration Project
The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) has announced a grant of $3.2 million over three years from the Templeton World Charity Foundation in support of efforts to restore the endangered American chestnut. This is SUNY-ESF’s largest-ever charitable gift.

The funding will support research and efforts to restore the economically and culturally significant tree species, billions of which were killed by a blight in the early twentieth century. ESF has genetically engineered a new strain of chestnut that includes a single gene from wheat, enabling the tree to detoxify the oxalic acid produced by the invasive fungus that causes the blight. According to the school, this is the first time scientists have sought approval for genetic engineering to restore a native tree species. Earlier this year, the research team submitted to federal agencies a petition that lays out the case for public distribution of the genetically engineered strain.

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Getting to Know Council VP & Syracuse City Arborist Steve Harris

Steve Harris at the Syracuse Parks Department’s annual community tree planting event involving approximately 100 trees and 100 volunteers. The event is organized in partnership with local partners Cornell Cooperative Extension-Onondaga County and Onondaga Earth Corps. “It is always the highlight of the year,” Steve says. Photo Courtesy Onondaga Earth Corps

Steve Harris has been Syracuse City Arborist since 2010. He has served several terms on the Council Board and is now its Vice President. Steve is also active with the Society of Municipal Arborists, excelling in conference program planning.    

Can you tell us about your educational trajectory?
Steve Harris: When I was 9 or 10, my Dad gave me an atlas of the United States for my birthday. I studied it often and knew all the states and capitols before that was taught in school, which might be the reason I studied Urban Geography at Ohio State. In 1990, at the end of my senior year of college, one of my friends told me they’d enrolled in the Peace Corps. The idea of getting that kind of experience resonated with me, so I applied and was sent to The Gambia in West Africa to be a forest extension agent.

Upon my return to the States, I worked in an unrelated field for a couple of years before realizing that forestry was the career path for me. I attended Paul Smith’s College to get an Associate’s Degree in Pre-Professional Forestry then to SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry to get a Master’s Degree in Forestry. In both cases, my focus was forest management.

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Underutilized Trees for Urban Use: ‘Harvest Gold’ Linden

Glossy summer foliage of ‘Harvest Gold’ linden. Photo by James Kaechele

This post comes to us from NYSUFC Board Member and New York Tree Trust Development Director James Kaechele. 

Harvest Gold Linden (Tilia cordata x mongolica ‘Harvest Gold’)

As an open-pollinated hybrid of T. cordata and T. mongolica, ‘Harvest Gold’ linden steals the best from each parent. Searching through rows of lindens at Moon Nursery in Chesapeake City, Maryland in early 2009, I noticed this tree was different. ‘Harvest Gold’ does not share the liability of ‘Greenspire’ linden’s wide and twiggy form. Nor does it suffer from the often sparse crown of a young ‘Redmond’ or the frequently crowded branching of silver linden. Time may still reveal a fatal flaw for ‘Harvest Gold’, but after planting and observing it for the last ten years across diverse New York City landscapes, I am prepared to say this is an excellent linden.

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i-Tree Planting Calculator Analysis of Buffalo’s Fall 2018 Tree Plantings

 

The planting sites used in Buffalo’s i-Tree Planting Analysis project as part of City Forester Ross Hassinger’s participation in the first-ever i-Tree Online Academy.

As part of the first i-Tree Online Academy, participants were asked to complete a comprehensive final capstone project that demonstrated their ability to utilize the i-Tree tools to analyze trees in their community or to engage community residents in examining the greenspace in their city or town. Projects were developed by each student and they were responsible to carry out all aspects of the design, planning, and implementation of each program.

Buffalo City Forester Ross Hassinger’s project involved the City’s 2018 street tree planting. In the fall season (Oct 15-Dec 31) of 2018, the city of Buffalo put out bids for a local licensed landscape company to plant 56 street trees in the City in various locations as shown in the map above. This is Ross’s report created after conducting his i-Tree Online Academy capstone project.

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Congress Passes FY20 Spending Bill with Increase for UCF

The Sustainable Urban Forests Coalition (SUFC) keeps us posted on the federal funding for UCF. There’s good news in this year’s update. They say, “These gains (and level funds) don’t happen in a vacuum. Thank you all for your work this year to help us spread awareness about the importance of investing in programs that support urban and community forestry efforts across the country. We look forward to working with you all to make further strides in the new year!” 
Congress passed a bipartisan spending bill on December 19 for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020, which includes a number of exciting wins for SUFC priorities. Here’s a quick rundown:

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