BLOOMINGTON – Bloomington Parks and Recreation’s urban forestry program was selected from more than 840 applicants to receive $100,000 through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry Program to maintain public trees, combat extreme heat and climate change, and improve access to nature.
The total grant award of $100,000 will be distributed to the City over the next four years, effectively doubling the urban forestry program’s budget for pruning street trees.
According to urban forester Haskell Smith, focused tree maintenance along “priority streets” identified in Parks and Recreation’s Storm Response Plan will reduce overall risk in wind and storm events. Major city thoroughfares with large numbers of trees under energized power lines were identified as “priority streets”. The trees along priority streets are inspected frequently, and the power lines are kept clear in coordination with Duke Energy.
Plans call for contractors, who will be selected via a competitive bid process, to prune an average of 80 to 250 trees per year for storm resilience.
Pruning trees before they fail in high winds alleviates the chance of the trees incurring major wounds that threaten the trees’ life expectancy, and preserves the existing mature tree canopy.
Identifying the locations of weak and failing trees, and promptly addressing dead and high-risk trees, reduces the number of resources dedicated to tree and limb cleanup following severe storms. Those resources may then be reallocated for more tree planting, proactive pruning, and preservation of the mature tree canopy.
For more information about trees in public rights of way and along city streets, or to view the city’s live “Treekeeper” dashboard of street tree species and locations, visit bloomington.in.gov/treecare.
