New York ReLeaf 2024 in Albany!

This year’s 31st Annual New York ReLeaf Conference provided education, conversation and opportunities for bonding over the topic of urban trees. Between July 24-26th, participants from a wide range of backgrounds and experience gathered at the Albany Hilton for cutting-edge presentations and crucial information.

Sessions began with opening remarks by DEC Urban and Community Forestry Program Coordinator Gloria Van Duyne; New York State Urban Forestry Council President Phil Healey; and City of Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan. Albany, Sheehan told the crowded room, has already achieved its goal of planting 2,500 trees by 2025.

Sean Mahar, NYSDEC Interim Commissioner, said, “This conference is so important to everything that we want to achieve collectively.” State Forester and DEC Division of Lands and Forests Director Fiona Watt also welcomed attendees: “This is an incredible time to be around urban forestry,” she said, “no matter your profession.”

Leslie Berckes, Executive Director of the Urban and Community Forestry Society, gave the keynote, “Urban Foresters: Stories From the Front Lines.”

Her powerpoint profiled those in what she termed the “urban forestry multiverse” — “the frontline folks who make trees happen, the people without whom our collective tree goals will not be met.” Case studies described “tree heroes from municipalities around the country” and their “novel solutions and innovative solutions.”

Six concurrent sessions followed. Deb Hilbert, Assistant Professor at ESF, summarized cutting-edge research on urban tree mortality and growth. Davey Resource Group’s Josh Behounek gave a crash course on securing grant funding. “It’s a necessary evil,” he said, “to learn how to find money.”He shared insights about “the art of story writing, pitfalls and tips.”

Another expert, Eliot Nagele of the Nature Conservancy, described how the composition of New York Botanical Garden’s old-growth Thain Forest has evolved in the past century. And NYSUFC board member Jay Lavigne, City of Albany Arborist, delivered crucial information about DEC UCF’s grant programs.

Environmental Justice represented a powerful theme over the course of the Conference. On the morning of the first day attendees could attend two consecutive panel discussions on the topic.

One, “Lessons Learned Planting Trees in Environmental Justice Neighborhoods,” featured representatives from the Schenectady-based nonprofit Community Fathers Inc., Newburgh’s Environmental Justice Fellowship and the Onondaga Earth Corps, based in Syracuse. Presenters shared stories from the EJ frontlines, exploring initiatives that have proved successful. Xavier McDonald of Community Fathers commented that people are afraid of trees. “That little bit of bad they see means that people don’t see the good.” He added, “All of us get caught up in our own ideas about where we live. When you show people you care it makes them want to do it themselves.”

A discussion followed about “Creating Sustainable Tree Equity Initiatives” with Kathy Lawrence of Greater Newburgh Parks Conservancy and Radix Ecological Sustainability Educational Director Scott Kellogg, along with Kenneth Brooks from Community Fathers. Brooks, a barber and owner of a landscaping service, said, “Our mission is to rebuild the community, one father at a time. A passion of mine is occupation rather than incarceration.” Community Fathers teaches not only tree planting but blacksmithing and sailing and how to make baked goods from scratch, which they sell at a local farmers’ market.

Gabby Miranda-Diaz of Onondaga Earth Corps said that the youth of Onondaga had been planting trees for twenty years, and in that time had planted 10,000 trees. “We’re bringing beauty back to the South Side of Syracuse,” she said. Onondaga “offers experience in the field, trying to get young people as hirable as possible so that they can go and take on the world, hopefully in the environmental field.”

Diaz added, in what could be the Conference’s greatest takeaway: “Environmental knowledge is the key to sovereignty and freedom.”

Field trips are a highlight of any tree conference, and Albany ReLeaf was no exception.

Some guests toured the Radix Center’s urban agroforestry plots of 175 food-producing street trees. The Radix Center promotes “ecological literacy and just sustainability” in Albany’s South End, and many on the walking tour came away with new ideas to assist in their own neighborhoods.

Others visited Washington Park, an important gathering space for city residents and home to innumerable venerable specimens.

A number were treated to an immersive experience at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve. Fire Manager Tyler Briggs and Conservation Director Neil Gifford offered an inside look at this home for a unique variety of rare plants and animals.

They include the endangered Karner blue butterfly, originally identified by author and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov in 1944. The Preserve’s annual Karner metapopulation has exceeded the 3,000-butterfly federal minimum for 11 years, and the 7,000 butterfly target for a decade.

The group’s foray along 2.7 miles of well-maintained hiking trails through the Preserve’s wide open sandy precincts and grassy woodland passages was splendid.

The tour offered both magnificent vistas and insights into the value of prescribed fires. A high-quality pitch pine-scrub oak barrens, they learned, is termed a “grassy-shrubby-savanna.”

Program topics Friday morning included achieving healthy forests in the urban context; models of urban forestry in Albany’s Capital District; and two presentations on the legacy of redlining policies in two upstate cities.

Allison Malatesta, a recent graduate of Union College, presented analysis from her senior thesis research about tree diversity in Schenectady redlining districts.

Howard University Associate Professor Lemir Teron related a thought-provoking history of the “Impacts of Environmental Racism in Syracuse.”

Dr. Teron told of how majority Black neighborhoods in Syracuse had been “targeted for disinvestment and informed destructive land-use planning.” Cities “all around the country are feeling the impact of environmental racism,” he said. He also shared cause for optimism today, as the city gears up to reimagine itself with the impending razing of Interstate 81, posing the question, “How can we galvanize the communities to move forward?” Every person has to be involved, he said. “I want your grandma making a priority decision.”

Later, NYSCA board member and Cornell Cooperative Extension educator Leanna Nugent spoke about how municipalities might achieve the status of the Arbor Day Foundation’s Tree City USA by utilizing CCE Onondaga’s Tree City USA field manual. New York State boasts 185 Tree Cities, including 8 new communities. DEC Lab Manager Amanda Dillon gave an update from DEC’s Forest Health Research Lab.

Continuing the momentum of the Conference’s discussion regarding urban forestry’s potential benefits for all members of the community, a panel convened on “Overcoming Obstacles to Equitable Tree Planting.” Lemir Teron joined Betsy Henry, 25-year leader of ReTree Schenectedy, Kate Littlefield of Onondaga Earth Corps and Kathryn McKenzie, a former Environmental Justice Fellow in Newburgh. Their combined knowledge provided an inspiring look at challenges and infrastructure that might impact success of tree planting initiatives in under-resourced neighborhoods.

Friday’s closing session featured a panel of seasoned urban foresters leaned in on the subject of “Women in Urban Forestry: Today and Tomorrow.”

USDA Forest Service Northeast Program Manager Danielle Gift shared her view that hers is “one of the greatest jobs on the planet.” City of Ithaca City Forester Jeanne Grace offered her perspective that the most exciting trend of the future is “the environmental aspect, and the knowledge that showing up someplace with a truckload of trees isn’t enough.” Fiona Watt of DEC added her enthusiasm about “coalition building, and loosening of the silos between urban and traditional forestry. We’re crossing boundaries that have existed for years. I’m really excited to see people all on the same page.” Lori Brockelbank, an area manager with Davey Resource Group, offered that she looks forward to what we don’t know today that we can find out tomorrow. Bringing people together that haven’t been brought together before. People coming together for once.”

Asked what advice they’d give to women just starting in urban forestry, Gift said, “Find your niche, the thing that is your jam. And follow that. Ladies, sit at the actual table, not the chairs that are lined up against the wall. You deserve to be there just as much as anyone else.” She commented, “The more diversity we have in this field, the better we can be at getting trees in the ground and taking care of them.”

Brockelbank said, “Don’t ever give up. Mom said, ‘Girls aren’t foresters.’ I said, ‘Watch me.’”

These four leaders offered a message of optimism that seemed to resonate with the packed audience at ReLeaf in Albany.