32 City Trees
Wow. Wow. Wow! Best week of my career so far. The
instructional cadre is very knowledgeable and motivating, and
my class-mates were all top-notch. I am excited about putting
to use the tools that I learned at MFI, and to build off of the new
relationships that were formed.
—Heather Dionne, City Forester, City of Hartford,
Connecticut
This year the Municipal Forestry Institute (MFI)
went back to its roots and returned to the UCLA Lake Arrowhead
Conference Center amidst 42 wooded acres (17 ha) in Southern
California's San Bernardino Mountains. If you started from sea
level in Santa Monica and went through Los Angeles then pro-
ceeded 90 miles (145 km) further east and about one mile (1.6
km) up, you would arrive at Lake Arrowhead.
The first two MFIs (then called Municipal Forester Institute)
took place at Lake Arrowhead in 2006 and 2007. Back then,
George Gonzalez was chief forester for the City of Los Angeles
and Walt Warriner was the city forester for Santa Monica. Both
were instrumental in founding MFI, so it was appropriate that
they were both part of the teaching cadre for MFI '17 at the
original venue.
Many Californians were recipients of MFI scholarships this year,
thanks to the leadership of CA State Urban Forester John Melvin
who attended the first MFI eleven years ago. John drove up the
mountain and gave an inspirational talk about his career trajec-
tory following MFI 2006 and the current state of urban forestry
in California.
Although many in MFI 2017 were from the West Coast,
Philadelphia and New York City were well represented and we
even had a participant from the U.K. In all, 57 graduates from
across the nation and across the sea joined the hundreds
of urban forestry leaders who credit the Municipal Forestry
Institute as a game changing event in their careers.
—Andy Hillman, MFI Teaching Cadre and Past SMA
President
Congrats, MFI 2017 graduates! Photo by Paul Ries
Back to our roots: MFI 2017
Back to our roots: MFI 2017
Peer Learning Groups at Lake Arrowhead had the luxury of
convening outdoors in February. Photo by Paul Ries
