THIS ISSUE Sof the American Forests magazine coincides with a grand opening: the United States Chapter of 1t.org, a global movement to conserve, restore and grow 1 trillion trees by 2030.

American Forests and the World Economic Forum, which launched 1t.org in January, have come together to launch this chapter as the first of its kind. Other regional chapters are being considered.

So why is American Forests taking on yet another new challenge? Because it is time to bring together the most inclusive forest movement ever assembled in our country, from governments to Girl Scouts.

You have heard a lot from American Forests about our ambition to be a movement builder, rallying America behind our vision to reforest America by restoring damaged forest landscapes and bringing Tree Equity to our cities.

Put simply, 1t.org gives us the power to do this better than we have ever dared to dream. The trillion trees vision is drawing in unprecedented new partners from well beyond the traditional forest community. This includes companies that have ambitions to go carbon neutral or negative, youth groups, churches and individuals rallying to the idea of planting trees and caring for our forests like never before.

No wonder, because we need trees like never before. Trees offer our most powerful natural solution to help slow climate change — potentially almost 30 percent of needed carbon reductions. But climate change-induced wildfires, droughts, pests and diseases are more prevalent than ever and compromise our forests’ ability to sequester and store carbon. We must take action to help our forests survive climate change, so they can help us solve the problem.

In American cities, people have sweated through a dangerously hot summer when they could not safely go to crowded parks or indoor spaces to cool off, due to COVID-19. Lower income people living without air conditioning have been especially at risk. This situation has underscored the life or death urgency in bringing the cooling benefits of trees to every neighborhood, which is our vision for Tree Equity.

We need a surge of forest conservation, restoration and tree planting comparable to a century ago, when American Forests was building the forest movement. In the 1930s, American Forests helped create the Civilian Conservation Corps, employing more than 3 million young people who planted millions of trees, fought wildfires and improved wild- life habitats. We can put America back to work again planting and caring for trees.

That’s where the new U.S. Chapter of 1t.org comes in. Our belief is that the way we plant a trillion trees is one tree at a time. No contribution is too small. So we are going to use the U.S. Chapter of 1t.org to help anyone and everyone who is interested to find their place in this work. For the first time in decades, we have a community made up of the full diversity of partners who care about forests.

So how will the chapter make the whole of this movement more than the sum of its parts?

• We invite any company, nonprofit organization or government to make a pledge of action, which will challenge everyone to do more and raise awareness. You can check the latest pledges and total actions committed on our new website www.us.1t.org.
• We offer a powerful community of practice for trillion trees partners to learn, share and innovate. This will include cutting-edge forestry tools and resources shared on our website, online trainings and eventual in-person work- shops, which we call Learning Labs.
• We will help individuals find  a role, such as providing support to nonprofits leading this work and learning how to plant trees at home.

Our approach is already working. Twenty-eight U.S.-based governments, companies and nonprofit organizations that are part of the chapter have collectively pledged to plant or prevent the loss of nearly 850 million trees, in cities and large forest landscapes here in the U.S. and abroad. And this is just the very beginning.

There are few moments in history when America has faced so many colliding issues at one time. This perfect storm includes COVID-19, climate change, reckoning on racial equity and worsening risks to forests and other natural resources. The 1t.org U.S. Chapter will help our country meet this moment. Our leadership partner, the World Economic Forum, brings a wealth of global relationships, skilled people and technical resources to help us lead like never before. Onward to a trillion!

For more news and updates from Jad, follow him on Twitter @JadDaley.

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TO A YOUNG GIRL, it was paradise. Sheryl Gold’s modest Miami Beach apartment opened onto a world of wonders: the powerful yet soothing ocean, sand for miles, exotic-looking birds and tangles of shady banyan trees and mangroves.

“We didn’t ever leave the island when I was a child,” recalls Gold, now 74, of growing up on Miami Beach. “You didn’t go into downtown Miami. You just felt closer to nature.”

Over time, Gold’s connection to the natural surroundings of her barrier island home gave way to worries about rising sea levels and development, and ultimately spurred a lifelong passion for the environment. But it was her introduction to American Forests that sparked her laser focus on trees and her decades of volunteer work.

Intrigued by the role trees play in cooling the earth, Gold, then a marketing executive in New York City, created a national television public awareness campaign in 1990 for American Forests’ new Global ReLeaf program (now called American ReLeaf ). The campaign featured actor Christopher Reeve and promoted the goal of planting millions of trees in the U.S.

“It inspired me to become an urban citizen forester,” says Gold, who now splits her time between Coral Gables, Fla., and another barrier island — Long Island, N.Y.

Gold spent the next 25 years concentrating on forestry issues closer to home. She co-founded and led an advocacy group to protect Miami Beach’s mature native trees, which provide vital shade in an ever-hotter climate, and pushed the city to hire its first forester.

Lately, she’s been considering her legacy. Her thoughts have returned to American Forests, specifically the equity and diversity focus of its Tree Equity: Career Pathways Initiative, which creates opportunities for people from under-resourced communities to get training and find work in urban forestry.

“American Forests is constantly seeking out new solutions to challenges and finding innovative ways to address them,” says Gold, who recently made a bequest to American Forests. “I found this to be exactly the kind of action that spoke to me.”

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WHILE PERCHED atop a tractor, with his father by his side, Joshua Simon became a lover of the land beneath him.

Planting pecan trees on his family’s farm in Morganza, La., was one of the things he enjoyed doing the most when he was a pre-teen. Not only did the trees provide nuts for pecan pie, a quintessential Southern staple, but, once grown, they provided much-needed shade from the blazing hot sun.

No one was surprised, therefore, that Simon planned on studying agriculture in college. But when a stranger suggested he focus on trees, and specifically in cities, Simon was intrigued. He decided to pursue a degree in urban forestry at nearby Southern University and A&M College.

While there, he read “Dumping in Dixie” by Dr. Robert Bullard, which chronicles the disproportionate health impact of petrochemical plants on Black Americans in the South. Simon realized that decisions about where to locate everything, from industry to trees, can have long-term ramifications for people’s health.

Trees can improve health by cleaning the air people breathe and reducing stress. But a map of tree cover in cities is too often a map of income and race. Often in cities, trees are sparse in low-income neighborhoods and some neighborhoods of color.

Now a master’s student at Ohio State University, Simon is researching how social and economic class status may influence who has access to green space. As part of his work, he is studying patterns among Black, White and East African immigrant populations in Columbus, Ohio, home to the university. Surveys from three census tracts reveal all populations visit parks but at different rates. People with higher incomes use parks more frequently and often have access to higher quality parks in and outside of their neighborhood.

“There’s little research about the socioeconomic dimensions that affect green space access and use in Columbus,” says Simon. “I want to make sure Black and Brown communities have equitable access to the benefits of trees.”

Simon believes understanding how various populations want to use and access parks can help cities make better decisions about where more trees and parks are needed — whether they’re mighty oaks in a busy city or pecan trees in a tiny town.

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PLANTING A TREE on your property can be beneficial to you and your community. Trees lower your utility bills by shading your house in the summer and blocking wind in the winter. They clean the air and reduce flood risks. Trees help fight climate change, and they’re even linked to improving mental health.

Follow these four tips to maximize the benefits a tree provides. We call this “right tree, right place.”

1. Location. Choose the right planting spot, at least 15 feet from buildings so roots and branches can have room to grow and don’t invade surrounding infrastructure, such as power lines, sidewalks and pipes. Dial 811 to notify your utility company of your intent to dig so they can locate and mark underground utilities.

2. Function. Consider what you’d like your tree to do. Would you like a shade tree, a flowering tree, one that will attract wildlife or something else?

3. Tolerance. Think locally and research what kind of trees thrive in your region. Use available resources, like the Audubon Native Plant Database, to look up trees that are native to your area. The United States Department of Agriculture’s Plant Hardiness Zone Tool will tell you your local planting zone. But, keep in mind that climate change is quickly altering these zones. Because of this, you may want to choose a tree species that can tolerate higher heat or more intense droughts. A local arborist may be able to give you advice.

4. Selection. Trees have specific requirements for sunlight, soil and water. Choose a tree that will thrive in the location you’ve selected. A tree that needs full-sun exposure may not survive if planted in shade, and a tree that thrives in dry soil might die if planted in poorly drained soil.

For more information on choosing and planting the right tree, visit americanforests.org/how-to-plant-a-tree.

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Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) who love plants celebrated that passion this summer during #BlackBotanistsWeek, a social media campaign that encouraged all BIPOC plant lovers to spend one week posting about flora. This followed several viral campaigns supporting Black environmentalists, including #BlackBirdersWeek, which followed an incident in New York City’s Central Park in which a White woman called police on a Black man who was birdwatching. #BlackBotanistsWeek helped promote, encourage and create a safe space for BIPOC to connect and share information. Some shared photos of plants that reminded them of special moments with their families. Others posted poems about what they appreciate about plants. On the last day of the week, many honored the knowledge of indigenous communities who historically walked the lands we appreciate today. “This week helped us find each other,” says Dr. Tanisha Williams, one of the founders of the campaign, which engaged 3,000 people on social media. “Next, we want to create an online networking platform to support the people we reached on social media and create a fund to provide young botanists with field supplies.”

Groundbreaking study rules out best-case climate change scenarios

Scientists have tried for decades to pin down how much the planet will warm if human activity doubles atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, a level we’re on track to hit within about half a century. A major new study, released in July in Reviews of Geophysics, has narrowed the likely range of warming to between 4.1 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit. This finding, the result of four years of research, rules out prior best-case climate predictions. The low end of the range, 4.1 degrees, is past the 3.6-degree “safe” threshold for planetary heating. Beyond this the world will see increasingly dire famines and droughts, temperatures rising beyond human survivability and other planet-altering catastrophes. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are currently at around 413 parts per million, compared to the pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million. Unless the world makes immediate and deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions, and couples that with reforestation and other actions, we are on track to see carbon dioxide levels double from pre-industrial concentrations within the next 50 years or so.

C40 Cities launches agenda for a green and just recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic

A coalition of cities from around the world has developed a COVID-19 economic recovery plan that calls for creating green jobs and improving public green spaces to benefit human health and nature. C40 Cities, a network of 96 cities that formed to take bold action on climate in accordance with the Paris Agreement, recently outlined a vision for an equitable and sustainable recovery in its “C40 Mayors Agenda for a Green and Just Recovery.” More than half of the world’s people reside in cities, so the actions taken by cities can have significant impacts on large numbers of people and wildlife. Although the recovery agenda is led by mayors, its members are also calling on national and regional governments to join them in com- mitting to a recovery that prioritizes a green stimulus.

Hope for ash trees — scientists find genes resistant to deadly beetle

Emerald ash borer (EAB) is an invasive insect native to eastern Asia. It was first identified in Detroit in 2002, and has become one of the most destructive forest insects to invade the United States since its introduction. Tens of millions of ash trees have already been killed in forests and swamps, along waterways and in urban, suburban and rural neighborhoods. But new research findings suggest there may be a way to save ash trees from the pests. An international team of scientists has identified 53 candidate EAB-resistant genes. Their study, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in May 2020, suggests it may be possible to increase the resistance of susceptible ash species through breeding with their resistant relatives. This is promising news for managing an infestation that has severely impacted ash trees in the U.S.

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By Michele Kurtz

“HARD WORK, low pay, miserable conditions, and more!”

On its face, the California Conservation Corps’ motto might seem like more of a warning than a recruiting tool, but for thousands, it represents a promise: new skills, entry to a career, even a bit of an adventure.

And it fairly describes the work of roughly 3,400 young people the state agency trains each year for jobs in forestry and other conservation fields.

Planting tree seedlings on steep hillsides on hot summer days and thinning forests of dense vegetation so trees already planted there have room to grow is hard work.

Growing and taking care of trees in cities is also hard. Digging large holes for hardy trees that can withstand relatively harsh city environments and climbing trees to prune branches so they won’t fall on cars and houses can be exhausting.

Yet it’s the kind of work we desperately need more people to do as interest in trees as a solution to climate change and social inequity takes off across America.

And, despite how arduous this work is, the opportunity couldn’t come at a better time. As of August, 1 in 10 Americans was unemployed. People from under-resourced communities in cities and rural areas — two places that have the highest potential for forestry jobs — are among the hardest hit by the recession.

The World Economic Forum-led global movement — called 1t.org — to conserve, restore and grow 1 trillion trees by 2030 is one significant opportunity to create forestry jobs. Twenty-eight United States-based corporations, governments and nonprofits joined the movement this summer by pledging nearly 850 million trees. American Forests and the World Economic Forum, who lead the U.S. Chapter of 1t.org, are helping to bring their pledges to life.

The opportunity to put large numbers of people to work also stems from another critical and related need: national forests in the U.S. have been devastated by climate change-induced wildfires, droughts, pests and diseases. There’s already a 7.7-million-acre-backlog of land that needs to be brought back to life. In many places, addressing this need will require a combination of such things as planting trees and thinning dense forests to increase their resilience and diversity and allow new trees to thrive. The backlog is especially dire following reductions in the overall federal forestry workforce and a radical shift in the work being done. An increasing share of federal forestry workers, especially in the western U.S., are fighting wildfires rather than taking care of existing trees and thinning the forests to remove fire fuels.

The need to achieve Tree Equity in cities also creates a chance to put to work people from urban areas hardest hit by unemployment so they can plant and take care of trees in places that need them the most. Tree Equity is about every city neighborhood having enough trees so that every person benefits from them. In most cities, trees are sparse in low-income neighborhoods and some neighborhoods of color.

The Nature Conservancy has identified more than 20 million acres of U.S. public land — a combination of federal, state, tribal and local land, as well as land in cities — that present opportunities for reforestation. Reforesting at that scale could require planting as many as 6 billion trees, a scope of work that would create or support 582,000 jobs, from entry-level tree planters to forest workers and conservation scientists. The price tag: about $14.66 billion.

“We have an enormous need to restore our forests and plant billions more trees in America,” says Jad Daley, president and CEO of American Forests. “Given the recession, this is a great opportunity to put legions of people to work in cities and rural areas. We need a mass mobilization. Doing so will require resources, as well as innovative thinking about how to make jobs in the forestry sector alluring and available to everyone.”

A TOUGH SELL

Under any plan to reforest millions of acres in the U.S., entry-level tree planting jobs will be the most plentiful. But filling these types of jobs is challenging. Not only is the work physically demanding, with workers in large forests often planting several hundred trees a day, the pay is low. Last year, the average hourly wage of a forest or conservation worker in the U.S. was $15.76, and hourly rates for tree planters are the lowest in the forestry sector.

What’s more, the jobs are seasonal and only last a few months. Most people who plant trees in the U.S. are guest workers. A lot of other forestry work is seasonal, too, including fighting wildfires, growing trees in nurseries and using prescribed burns to manage forests. That can make it difficult to lure people into the field and keep them there.

To attract more workers — and make a lasting impact on people’s lives and the economy — we need to build an army of stable, long-term jobs with potential for upward mobility.

A SHARED VISION

One way to build a stable workforce is to cobble together seasonal jobs to create positions that are more stable and last for longer periods of time, says Zander Evans, executive director of the Forest Stewards Guild, a Santa Fe-based professional organization of foresters and other land stewards that also runs training programs. Nursery and planting work could be combined, as could wildfire fighting and work to clear fire- prone underbrush. This would mean training people in several skill sets.

“We all know that planting trees for 8 to 10 hours a day is hard work,” Evans says. “But I think if we could pay a living wage to both grow the trees and then get the trees in the ground in the right way, that could help.”

But a fragmented forestry sector makes designing those positions complicated. People in forestry jobs, including tree planters and other seasonal workers, are employed by a slew of public agencies at every level, as well as private industry. Mobilizing a massive army of more robust and stable positions — with paths for upward mobility — would require agencies across government and private employers to work together.

“Building this sort of capacity is really about stitching together, through relationships, the workforce that we’ll need,” says Brian Kittler, senior director of forest restoration at American Forests.

Recognizing this need, leaders from various forest sectors in recent years have begun creating strategies and policies intended to better leverage the skilled forestry staff in state and federal agencies with added capacity from non-governmental organizations and forestry contractors.

This is an important component of “shared stewardship,” a relatively new concept designed to make it easier for governments, nonprofit organizations, tribes and private companies to work together and pool their resources in projects that cross forest ownership boundaries. In this vein, the workforce trained and coordinated by the Forest Stewards Guild provides vital labor for tree planting, prescribed fire, restoration thinning and wildland fire fighting across shared landscapes in New Mexico. American Forests works with several states to advance shared stewardship strategies that include examining their workforce needs as restoration work scales up.

The approach could have a major impact in rural communities, where much of the large-scale planting and forest restoration would occur. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many rural communities had long been devastated by depressed economies. Stable, year-round jobs both directly and indirectly linked to forests — such as wood product manufacturing or catering to the massive outdoor recreation industry — would be an economic boon in these areas.

A CAREER PATH

Though they might begin in entry-level positions, Evans says that people in forestry can soon find themselves running drones, doing mapping and even communicating with residents about prescribed burns.

“There is a career ladder,” he says. Making sure that ladder is accessible to those who need it most is more important than ever. One of the best ways to do that is through job training programs such as the California Conservation Corps, which focuses much of its Corps member recruitment on under-resourced communities.

Growing up in a low-income family in a Los Angeles suburb, Luna Morales’ main exposure to nature was a yearly trip to a state park.

After two years in the California program, Morales, now 21, can fell trees with a chainsaw and help reroute creeks. She was promoted to crew leader and is working toward her associate’s degree. “With the background I came from,” Morales says, “I never would have expected to be here.”

“The Cs,” as its members call it, was created by the state of California in 1976. Modeled loosely after the national Civilian Conservation Corps that put 3 million people to work during the Great Depression, it is a state agency and a model American Forests and others believe could be replicated during the current recession.

Corps members receive a $1,905 monthly stipend while getting on-the-job training in everything from building and clearing trails to cutting down dead trees and responding to natural and manmade disasters. American Forests works with the group on a number of planting and shrub-clearing projects.

Workforce development programs are also key in urban areas — especially low-income neighborhoods and some communities of color, which tend to have fewer trees and the highest unemployment. The need for people who can plant, trim and prune trees in cities is expected to grow 10% by 2028.

That’s why American Forests works with job training partners in several cities to support and increase capacity for urban forestry programs, through our Tree Equity: Career Pathways Initiative. We have also developed a guide for creating entry-level urban forestry career pathways programs that target people in communities who could benefit most from entering the field.

“It’s definitely a moment where we’re crystal clear about the cost of inaction on our forests, and we are crystal clear about the coordinated effort that it’s going to take to actually make significant change,” says Sarah Lillie Anderson, senior manager of American Forests’ Tree Equity programs.

Take William Rucker of Detroit, for example. He had never held a job outside of prison, which he was released from in 2019. He enrolled in an urban forestry training program offered by The Greening of Detroit, a nonprofit that plants trees and provides education and workforce development for people from under-resourced communities, many of them formerly incarcerated.

Rucker has since been hired by “The Greening,” one of American Forests’ partners, and also started his own landscaping business, serving about 30 houses a day. He plans to expand soon and put others to work.

“I’m hiring people from The Greening because I know they’ve been taught, they have qualifications and I can depend on them to show up for work every day,” he says.

Besides forestry skills training, the organization provides a range of support services, helping participants with transportation and housing, as well as basic training about being on time for work. These “wraparound” support services have contributed mightily toward the program’s 87% job placement rate, says Vice President Monica Tabares.

A FIRST STEP

Fortunately, proposals to reforest millions of acres of U.S. forests — and train and hire the workers to do it — have gained steam in Congress in the last several months. This summer, a bipartisan bill called the Great American Outdoors Act was signed into law, providing $900 million annually to expand America’s public land and provide grants to private forest owners to voluntarily protect their forests through conservation easements.

To complement that achievement, American Forests helped draft The REPLANT Act, which focuses on conserving the national forests we have, largely by planting trees. The act would provide 49,000 new jobs to reforest 1.2 billion trees. This legislation was introduced in the House and the Senate in July, with bi-partisan support.

But much more will be needed.

Whether a major workforce expansion involves reinstituting the Civilian Conservation Corps, rethinking how to create full-time forest sector jobs, developing more accessible training and paths to careers — or more than likely some combination — the time to act is now. We need to plant and take care of billions of trees. And millions of Americans are out of work.

“Rarely have we had an opportunity to address two huge crises, climate change and the economy, at the same time,” says Daley, of American Forests. “This is the moment to be bold.”

Michele Kurtz writes from Washington, D.C., and is American Forests’ director of communications.

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VARIETY MIGHT BE the spice of life. But salt is a close second.

Blindingly white under the South Texas sun, the salt flats of La Sal del Rey have long whetted appetites. Early indigenous groups camped on the lake’s shores, where they likely used the salt to preserve game. They were followed by the Aztecs, and later by Spanish colonizers, who both claimed the lake’s lucrative salt deposits for their king.

The lake’s salt mining days are over. Its surroundings are now known for another rare commodity: native thornforests, also called tamaulipan thornscrub. Thornforests host more than 530 bird species and are the only habitat in the United States for the ocelot, a rare, leopard-spotted cat. These forests once blanketed the Lower Rio Grande Valley, but are now restricted to less than 10% of their former range. As climate change and fast-growing suburban sprawl take their toll, the future of these landscapes hangs in the balance.

In March, as part of a multi-decade push to restore these dwindling forests, American Forests planted 70,000 thornforest seedlings near the southern shore of La Sal del Rey. The planting project, carried out in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and with support from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Climate Adaptation Fund, reforested 70 acres of abandoned farmland in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

Crews used heavy equipment to clear stubborn invasive grasses, then planted seedlings in plastic “shelter tubes” that can boost plant survival rates by as much as 90%. The tubes help stop hot winds from drying out the seedlings and encourage the young plants to grow tall and put down deep roots.

“It looked almost like a construction site,” said Jon Dale, American Forests’ senior manager for forest restoration in the region. “Except we were rebuilding habitat, not structures.”

This was the first project done in accordance with a new drought resilience strategy developed by American Forests and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which aims to grow thornforests that can withstand the hotter, drier future forecasted for Texas. As part of this strategy, the La Sal del Rey planting used 31 native tree and shrub species, grown from seeds collected from a variety of individual plant populations across the valley — the more diverse the genetics, the thinking goes, the more likely the overall forest is to thrive.

This planting will also inform the rollout of the newly completed Thornforest Conservation Plan, the first region- wide assessment of strategic thornforest reforestation opportunities. American Forests initiated the development of this plan in 2018, and is currently crafting a business plan with local partners to define the specific objectives and strategies to fund and prioritize additional planting efforts in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

Diverse plantings, like the one at La Sal del Rey, don’t just restore habitat for ocelots and other wildlife. They also help carry on the region’s millennia-old history of people and plants. A vast array of thornforest species have medicinal and culinary uses, explained ethno- botanist Benito Trevino, an expert in the propagation and uses of the region’s plants. The seed pods of Texas ebony — one of the species planted at La Sal del Rey— can be eaten raw, he said, or grilled for a “really nice toasty flavor.” Roasted and ground up, the pod becomes a coffee substitute.

The region’s ubiquitous mesquite and prickly pear cactus will soon colonize the planting site as well. The prickly pear’s roots are medicinal and its paddles are edible, Trevino said, while its fruit is not only tasty but also a remedy for diabetes. As for mesquite, its sweet pods can be ground into flour, which Trevino’s wife adds to cupcakes and waffles.

It’s only appropriate that so many edible plants will soon grow on the shores of La Sal del Rey. As a good chef knows, any flavor can be boosted with a pinch of salt.

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AT 1,200 SQUARE MILES, Rhode Island is the nation’s smallest state. But under the leadership of Governor Gina Raimondo, it’s become an outsized influencer in promoting the value of urban forests to address climate change, public health and employment issues. For her work in implementing a bold strategy to plant and protect trees, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, American Forests honored the governor with its inaugural Tree Equity Champion Award in September.

Raimondo was the force behind Rhode Island’s 2017 decision to become a founding member of the 25-state U.S. Climate Alliance, which pledged to take immediate action to address climate change. Her administration has backed that commitment with several initiatives that emphasize the role forests play in improving climate resilience.

Partnering with American Forests, Rhode Island is now building the methodology for a Tree Equity Score, which helps prioritize investment in neighborhoods where low tree canopy overlaps with socioeconomic needs. The state is also piloting a suite of planning, policy and finance tools that cities, nonprofits and other groups can use to optimize their urban forests to address climate change and public health needs. A companion Tree Equity Score planning tool, launching this fall, offers GIS-based resources that help under-resourced populations pinpoint where new tree plantings will have the most potential to improve public health, reduce energy use through natural cooling and remove carbon from the atmosphere.

“Rhode Island is leading in the fight against climate change. As the fastest warming continental state, we know we don’t have time to waste,” Raimondo says. “This initiative builds on our statewide climate resilience strategy, Resilient Rhody, and highlights the urgency for urban tree canopy as a critical infrastructure on the front lines.”

With heat-related deaths projected to increase ten-fold in eastern U.S. cities by 2050, Rhode Island is focused on expanding urban forests to alleviate health problems caused by rising temperatures in the state’s Health Equity Zones, which are often lower-income communities with less tree cover and poorer air quality.

“Rhode Island is riveted on the equity and practical issues around urban forestry. Our goal is to increase the tree canopy in our cities and to get this right! That means taking a strategic approach to all aspects of Tree Equity,” says Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management Director, Janet Coit. “Through a diverse coalition of stakeholders, we are creating state- of-the-art tools, finance mechanisms, and policies to ensure long-term success in both planting and maintaining a healthy urban forest to enhance quality of life for generations to come.”

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THERE ARE 154 national forests in the United States. If you haven’t had the pleasure of hiking in one of them, you might’ve drunk a glass of water that originated in a river that flows through this type of forest.

Despite the beauty and importance of national forests, they are being degraded and destroyed by development and cli- mate change-induced droughts, diseases, uncontrolled wildfires and more.

Two big wins happened in Washington, D.C., this summer to help make these forests healthy again. Both moves show the kind of leadership needed for the U.S. to contribute to reaching the global trillion trees goal being led by 1t.org.

The Great American Outdoors Act was signed into law in August, marking one of the greatest forest conservation achievements in decades. The legislation fully and permanently funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), the nation’s most important tool for providing access to national forests and other public land. American Forests and its partners have been advocating for this legislation since the fund was created in 1965.

The law doubles, to $900 million annually, the money allocated to LWCF. Governments will be able to use the money to maintain forests and expand the amount of protected forests, both on private and public land. Most of this land will be open to the public. The increase will also support the Forest Legacy Program, the only federal program for protecting privately-owned forests through conservation easements or land purchases.

A complement to this legislation, The REPLANT Act, was introduced in the House and Senate in July. It focuses on conserving the national forests we have, largely by planting trees.

Both pieces of legislation could help boost our economy. Every $1 million invested in LWCF could support up to 31 jobs. And every decade, through The REPLANT Act, 49,000 new jobs would be created to reforest 1.2 billion trees.

Both, too, are good for our health. Never have the American people valued their parks, trails, forests and waterways more, turning to them during COVID-19 for emotional solace and physical activity.

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