City Trees

The Columbia, Missouri (pop. ~ 120,000) park system is comprised of 71 parks with over 3350 acres (1356 ha) of land. There are natural areas in almost every Columbia park, and nearly a third of the City's park acreage is officially designated either "nature park" or bufferland along destination trails and riparian stream corridors. Managing these natural areas is challenging, but a shift in community perspectives and changes in public policies has helped us move for- ward in addressing crucial natural resources issues. One key lesson of natural area management that we learned long ago is that it is a losing proposition if we try and go it alone. Our Columbia Parks Department has worked diligently over the years to cultivate a myr- iad of partnerships to manage these natural areas, and it has been well worth it. A recent example of one of these valuable partnerships is our joint effort with the Science Teachers of Missouri (STOM) toward eradicat- ing invasive bush honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) from Columbia's parks. Columbia Public School District sci- ence teacher Mike Syzdlowski has organized numerous honeysuckle removal projects in Columbia parks to improve local woodland and habitat. These projects mostly involve high school and junior high students from the Columbia Public School District and serve as part of the students' curriculum on ecology and plant biology. Our collaboration with Columbia public schools is also indicative of the growing community awareness that the natural systems that make up Columbia's urban ecology are a vital component of the municipal infra- structure that provides Columbian residents with innumerable social and environmental benefits. This community perspective was echoed by public policy in December, 2006 when the Columbia City Council initi- ated funding for a Natural Resources Inventory (NRI). The Columbia NRI is a compilation of data, descriptions, and maps to document natural resources and attributes such as slopes, streams, soils, and vegetation. The collected data serves as a baseline refer- ence to understand change and identify potential impact. When the NRI Review Draft was released in 2010, it listed several recom- mendations to help protect and preserve Columbia's ecosystem. Primary among these ideas was that the City should explore the advantages of implementing a "green infrastruc- ture" approach to managing municipal stormwater, park, and open space resources. Integrating and coordinating the functions of these natural assets, it was reasoned, would promote sustainability and offer an efficient method of realizing environmen- tal and cultural benefits from these resources. Based on this common sense approach, in 2013 Columbia Parks and Recreation joined a multi-stakeholder partner- ship focused on creating an innovative open space/green infrastructure plan for the Columbia/Boone County area. The plan for this unique public-private partnership, called "Our Natural Legacy: A Plan for Columbia and Boone County," focused on quality of life and wellness issues, protecting community natural legacies, and identifying and prioritizing land parcels for conservation purposes. The citizens of Columbia are highly vested in the sus- tainability and resilience of our community parks and natural areas. We know that if we listen to and continue to work with the citizens of Columbia, they will con- tinue to support our parks department in our mission of enhancing and protecting Columbia's natural resources. —Brett O'Brien, Natural Resources Supervisor, Columbia, Missouri 34 CityTREES Controlled burn of prairie lands in Columbia, Missouri's Bonnie View Nature Sanctuary. Photo courtesy of Columbia Parks and Rec School kids in Columbia, Missouri participate in honeysuckle removal project. Photo by Mike Szydlowski

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