City Trees

January/February 2016

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!

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The 2015 SMA conference met in Denver, Colorado, with "High on Trees" as the theme. Denver City Forester Rob Davis and the larger urban forestry staff should be "high" on their accomplishments—Denver was rated one of the "10 Best Cities for Urban Forests" by American Forests. As we toured the Denver urban forest, the reasons for this high rating became apparent. The urban forestry staff manages approximately 76,000 trees in parks and along parkways. Each year, 1000 to 1200 new trees are planted. In Denver City Park (founded 1884) alone, an arboretum of over 3000 trees of several hundred species thrives even in the arid climate. Denver has 250 state cham- pion trees, 35 of which are located in the park system, which contains more than 350 urban parks and parkways. Among the 35 parkways, 16 are designated on the National Register of Historic Places. Emerald Ash Borer was found in Boulder in 2013, which sounded the alarm for Denver, where there are 190,000 pri- vately maintained trees in the public right-of-way (aka street trees); they are currently being inventoried but it's projected that there about 25,000 ash trees among them. Among the 76K trees managed by the City, 6K are ash trees. Denver is proactively treating its ash trees using the SLAM (Slow Ash Mor tality) guidelines (slameab.info). Reflections on SMA's 51 st Annual International Conference and Trade Show Denver, Colorado "Get High on Trees" Photo by Rich Grant courtesy of Visit Denver City Forester Rob Davis gave a superb "Inside View" presen- tation during the conference opening. You can see his slide show presentation here: http://tinyurl.com/jph4avr. We thank Rob, Forestry Operations Supervisor Steve Traylor, and all the urban forestry staff who rolled out the welcome mat for us in Denver. —Michelle Sutton, Editor Denver Forestry Operations Supervisor Steve Traylor and Edmond, Oklahoma Urban Forestry Program Specialist Leigh Martin 32 City Trees

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