Executive Director’s Report June 2021

Federal Policy Update – Here’s a link to the Sustainable Urban Forests Coalition advocacy webpage – this captures all of the letters the coalition has sent to Congress regarding issues and opportunities affecting U&CF.

Forest Service Regional Update – No update.

Forest Service Funding – We will be shifting from our 2020-2021 grant cycle to our 2021-2022 on July 1, 2021.

Forest Service Research – The LA Urban Center (The Los Angeles Center for Urban Natural Resources Sustainability). Here’s a link to the new Research Fellows at the Center, and other Forest Service Research. I attended an advisory call for the LA Urban Center (The Los Angeles Center for Urban Natural Resources Sustainability) on June 3rd.

Cal Fire – The next round of CAL FIRE grant opportunities are available

State Policy & Advocacy  –

• Our co-sponsored bill, with State Senator Anna Caballero, AB347, The California Community & Neighborhood Tree Fund – has cleared another hurdle yesterday at the Assembly Natural Resource Committee – it sailed through on consent! Two more committees and the General Assembly to go!
• There’s the AB-1500 Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparation, Flood Protection, Extreme Heat Mitigation, and Workforce Development Bond Act of 2022 U&CF is included. Efforts are underway to amend to include more for urban forestry and urban greening along with other community-based investments. We are watching this closely but this is likely to get shelved.
• California Assembly Member Christina Garcia has submitted a request to increase the amount of funding for both urban forestry and urban greening to $400mil, $200mil each. We’ve signed on to a letter of support and will follow this as it progresses.
• Outreach to legislators regarding the need for more funding for the Invasive Shot Hole Borer.

Program Updates

CIRCLE 4.0 Amplifying Urban Forestry –

No current updates – Work continues with planning meetings being held including with Project Learning Tree, marketing folks at Taylor guitar, and Matt Ritter at Cal Poly SLO. We are beginning a conversation with a PR firm for outreach near the event. We are working on an educational “APP” for kids contracting with Harvey Mudd College. We have a planting date of March 2022. Community-based educational events will ramp up in the months preceding and community-based groups will be instrumental in our success. We will be funding them to support successful efforts. Thirty cities will participate in this one-day, statewide event.

Here are our cities thus far:

Cool Parks Program –

All trees have been planted in this program!!! Even with COVID impacts, we’ve reached our goal! San Marcos completed their plantings in mid-May. The balance of our grant will be monitoring through the end of March 2022. Fourteen cities, fourteen community educational events, 2500 trees, 850+ volunteers. A great program!

City Forest Renewal 1.0 – proceeding, no update.

City Forest Renewal 2.0 – has yet to begin other than for administrative purposes – it will begin in earnest by this summer.

The Intersection Between Wildland Urban Interface and Urban Forestry – This event is coming together and the first one will be July 29th. Event Title is: Bridging the Gap: Urban Forestry in High Fire Risk Communities – An Urban Forestry Learning Lab. More details to follow soon.

Prop 1 – California Coastal Conservancy – We are STILL going back and forth on final documents but everything should be signed and ready to move on with this project. A have the contract in hand. Currently, the question is that they may require us to be bonded, even though this is not a construction project. The San Gabriel Watershed Management Project – 500 trees in ten cities/parks in the watershed.

Regional Councils – It would be fabulous to have the councils submit a monthly report to support our reporting to the Forest Service – here’s the link; we can try again! https://caufc.org/regional-council-report/

2021 Conference – we are in planning stages with The Urban Wood Network – entitled Invest From The Ground Up – Trees First Wood Next, organizing a virtual conference for October 14-15, 2021. We will be bridging urban forestry and climate change and essentially a cradle-to-cradle focus on the UF including end-use planning. We are beginning to nail down the process and the participants. More to come. Volunteers welcomed!

American Forests – no update.

Certification – back in the 2000’s CaUFC created the first in the nation UF certification. It went well for many years and numerous people became certified – a quite rigorous test. It got difficult for CaUFC to manage or afford as leadership on the program changed and the funding ran out. In 2011 CaUFC entered negotiations with the Society of American Foresters to take the program nationally – and that occurred. However, after a good start, they dropped the ball. Letting the program languish. Well, it has risen from the ashes and there is a national discussion on the matter, which I am part of for context. There have been two calls and there is a third next week. All I can say is, people are interesting and are not always their word, or honor contracts.

Other

Board member changes – no update.

Updated Employee Handbook – I am waiting for the edits to be made by our attorney and return the document to me.

Outreach – We are working on drought infographics and social media materials.

This campaign launched on Monday.
I submitted a supplementary proposal to CAL FIRE/US Forest Service for funding to implement an outreach campaign to city and county leadership and decision-makers regarding healthy urban forests and the reason it is important to maintain trees during drought.

Board of Directors –

Ad Hoc Committee for updating the Annual Awards – After speaking with Gordon on the last call, it was determined that the best course of action is to put off the Board committee work till next year. Deb and I took a crack at the changes. They are available here (not yet live)

Strategic Plan Update – finalizing the complete draft – will be sent to you on June 16th, the day before the board call.

Annual Report – in process. We promise!

Be well

Nancy Hughes