City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/232632
Connecticut Tree Wardens Association members come together for regular educational opportunities. understanding of the responsibilities of the job. At its core, the TWA is an educational association. Education comes about in many ways, and usually ends up going far beyond simple coursework. Due to the dedication of its members, the Association is up to providing education in a whole variety of ways. To answer my earlier question, I would say that there is never enough of education of this wide-ranging, practical, real-world sort. The Association does its best to offer its fair share. It is up to the individual tree warden to take advantage of it. And how does the SMA figure in? I had a conversation with Ken Placko, a longtime SMA member who is the tree warden for Fairfield, Connecticut and a past president and board member of the state's Tree Wardens Association (TWA). As Ken expressed it to me, in a lot of ways TWA and SMA are similar in terms of membership, purpose, and benefits. However, while being a member of the TWA might make a tree warden in Connecticut feel like a star in the galaxy, being a member of SMA leads him or her to feel that they are part of the universe. SMA is an international organization, through which one meets municipal arborists from all over the globe. It is the larger network. This is good for many reasons. Municipal arborists everywhere face pretty much the same challenges and usually have similar perspectives, but seeing how someone with different trees, a different climate, and different problems handles these challenges can be illuminating. As an example, Ken cites his experiences following Hurricane Katrina, when he joined a group put together in part by SMA that traveled to the Gulf to see what help they could provide to their counterparts in Louisiana and Mississippi. As Ken said, it only takes one hurricane to make you humble. But, through a hurricane and with the help of an association, one can also gain a lot of strength and share of lot of insight. Despite the difficulties of the setting, he found the interaction with his fellow municipal arborists exhilarating. For Ken, TWA and SMA is not an either/or, it is a both/and. He is proud of his membership in both. 34 City Trees