by TRC_Admin | Jan 23, 2023 | Planting, Trees
“In honor of Florida Arbor Day, join us at the Arboretum for a TREE SEED GIVEAWAY sponsored by local non-profit CO2NSQUENCES.ORG!
January 21 at 9 am. Limit 1 plant/tree per person. While supplies last. First come first served.
About : CO2NSEQUENCES.ORG!
High school senior Grant Tucker connects with community leaders and individuals who are working to combat the most cataclysmic issue mankind has ever been faced with- climate change.
Change is a concern for all of mankind and it is our generation’s responsibility to work towards reducing our carbon footprint. By consolidating youth coalition within the movement, amending our current dependency on fossil fuels, and utilizing the benefits of our Mother Earth, we can reach net zero emissions.”
— Jacksonville Arboretum & Botanical Gardens
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by TRC_Admin | Jan 23, 2023 | Codes, Trees
Photo: Tony Giberson, PNJ.com
“Pensacola has won the battle to preserve a ‘heritage’ oak tree on Spring Street in North Hill.
The city and property owners Larry and Ellen Vickery signed an agreement that guarantees the 61-inch diameter tree will not be cut down in exchange for the city paying the Vickerys’ legal fees in the case.
Since 2019, the city and the Vickerys have been in a legal battle over the tree after the Vickerys sought to cut it down to build a new home on the vacant property.
The Vickerys complied with a new state law that allowed them to get an arborist’s opinion that a tree was unhealthy or posed a risk to people or property and could be removed without having to pay the city’s mitigation cost for cutting down a protected tree.
A 61-inch tree on Spring Street in North Hill has been the center of a legal battle between a property owner who wanted to cut it down to build a new home and the city, which sought to preserve it. The city won an initial legal challenge of the tree’s removal but lost two subsequent appeals, with the final ruling agreeing that the Vickerys had followed a state law as written and could remove the tree…
A city arborist inspection of the tree conducted in September found the tree to be in ‘good health,’ and while there were several dead branches in the crown, it posed a low risk to people or property…
The state law surrounding the case was changed this year to require the same standards for arborists to be used to determine the health of trees. The updated law strengthens the city’s position in enforcing its local tree ordinance, but the courts said the new law couldn’t be applied to retroactively to Vickerys’ case.”
— Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal
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by TRC_Admin | Dec 7, 2022 | Trees
Video: WTSP
” City of Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said Miller & Sons LLC illegally cut down 28 protected trees in 2019.
Tampa’s mayor is sending a strong message to anyone cutting down trees illegally in the city.
Her message comes after a Tampa Bay area tree cutting firm was given the largest fine in the city’s history.
Miller & Sons Tree Service was fined $234,427.50 for violating state law. Mayor Jane Castor says in 2019, Miller & Sons cut down protected trees along Gandy Boulevard and on Schiller Street without a permit.
City arborists determined the trees were healthy, however, owner Jonathan Lee deemed the trees dangerous.
In 2019, the state changed the law saying local governments had no say over dangerous trees on residential properties.
The city argued both properties were not residential. A circuit court judge ruled at least one location was zoned for commercial use, the Gandy property.
The city filed an ethics complaint and last month, the International Society of Arboriculture issued a public reprimand against Lee.
‘They found that his behavior was unethical and illegal in this instance,’ Castor said. ‘They were found in violation…'”
— Niko Clemmons, WTSP
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by TRC_Admin | Aug 29, 2022 | Trees
Photo: Scenic Jacksonville
“We need many M????RE shade trees planted throughout Jacksonville, like this Southern Magnolia, to ensure cooler walking, dining, lounging, spectating, strolling, biking and yes, parking spaces.”
— Scenic Jacksonville
Visit Scenic Jacksonville’s Facebook Page
by TRC_Admin | Aug 29, 2022 | Environmental, Trees
Lack of Shade Photo: Kimberly Miller
“Late July blistered with sandy skies and soupy air in South Florida as a slug of Saharan dust drained clouds of rain while moisture clung to the surface like hot gum on a shoe.
The combination of a dry middle atmosphere blocking showers and moisture near the ground drove the heat index, or ‘feels-like’ temperature, into the triple digits from the East Coast to the Gulf of Mexico.
On 58th Street in West Palm Beach – a block of asphalt barren of shade trees – it reached 93.9 degrees near noon July 22 with a relative humidity of 58%. That means it felt like 108 degrees.
‘My electric bill was almost two-fold in June from what it was in March,’ said 27-year-old Varun Parshad, who sought shade with his dog Nala at Osprey Park, eight blocks south of 58th Street. ‘I try to be more disciplined with the temperature settings.’
But the Baltimore native likes to sleep with the thermostat on 69 degrees, which means his $40 bill in March was more than $80 in June…
Six miles to the southwest, the National Weather Service’s official gauge at Palm Beach International Airport registered 88 degrees at noon with a feels-like temperature of 100 degrees.
Spruce Avenue and 58th Street in West Palm Beach have no shade trees and only a few spindly palms.
The city has dedicated $7,700 to plant green buttonwoods in areas along 58th and 57th streets. The difference between 58th Street and the airport is significant enough when meteorologists and emergency officials have to make heat-related decisions…
Still, officials recognize that temperatures fluctuate by neighborhood, and it’s something some cities are trying to mitigate as they plan for a warmer future stoked by climate change…
City officials are dedicating $7,700 to plant 14 green buttonwood trees on 57th and 58th streets to throw some shade on the sunbaked blacktop. The money comes from a ‘tree mitigation’ fund that developers pay into if they can’t meet city requirements for trees on their properties. As of late July, there was $582,000 in the account…
Palm Beach County’s emergency operations center is well-equipped to handle a hurricane, but there is no history of a cooling center ever opening.
‘Our homes are typically set up with air conditioning because you can’t not have it,’ said Penni Redford, West Palm Beach’s resilience and climate change manager. ‘But then the question becomes, can you afford it?’…
She points to public libraries as a place people could go to cool off for now. But a cooling center in the future isn’t out of the question…
So, trees are, for now, what West Palm Beach has focused on as a way to cool neighborhoods and encourage more walking and biking to meet the city’s goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
It promised in 2015 to plant and give away 10,000 trees in 10 years. The tally by the end of 2022 is expected to be about 7,000.
Florida’s iconic palm tree, however, isn’t even an option at the tree giveaways because they offer little shade to baking urban heat islands and capture minimal amounts of carbon – a greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.
As city officials look for more ways to cool concrete jungles and balance carbon emissions, the priority for new plantings is often broadleaf hardwood trees, not the idyllic palm…”
— Kimberly Miller, Palm Beach Post
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by TRC_Admin | Aug 1, 2022 | Trees
Photo: Tony Giberson
“Pensacola will soon know the location, size and health status of every tree on city property.
Over the next seven weeks, crews from the consulting firm Geosyntec will be in city parks and along city streets cataloging every tree into a new database.
City Arborist Kris Stultz told the News Journal the database will give the city insight into the city’s tree canopy that it has never had before.
‘It’s a very nice load of information to have because now we can truly manage the forest that we have here,’ Stultz said. ‘Right now, as a general idea, we don’t know what we have. We don’t know what condition it’s in. This will give us a very good volume of data that we can start being proactive…’
The total cost of the survey is $119,000 and will record every tree in city parks and city-owned rights of way.
Once the survey is complete, anytime a city worker performs work on a tree or plants a new tree, it will be documented in the city’s database…
Stultz said the database can be used to target where new trees are needed to plant in city parks and along city streets, as well as fully document the labor the city puts into maintaining its tree canopy.
For example, Stultz said there are lots of Laurel oaks that have a much shorter lifespan than other oak trees. ‘They don’t live longer than about 70 years,’ Stultz said. ‘Once they get to a certain size, we’ve got start looking and say hey, it’s getting about time we need to start thinking about removing this tree and replacing it with other trees to keep the forest at a continual density.’
Some tree species are more susceptible to storm damage than others, and with the data in hand, city officials can prioritize where storm assessments can begin based on the type of trees in an area, Stultz said…
‘An inventory is useless usually three years after it’s taken, unless it’s been updated,’ Stultz said.
Stultz said he hopes the software included in the database will allow the inventory to be updated by almost any city employee conducting work or even members of the public.
The software that updates the database can run on a tablet and has been designed to be updated by someone who may not have a lot of experience with trees.
Stultz said he could see a community group or a gardening club opting to get access to the software from the city and spend a weekend updating the tree inventory in their neighborhood park.
‘That’s the other beauty of this system is the simplicity to it,’ Stultz said. ‘Once you have the initial inventory, updating it is fairly simple.'”
— Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal
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