Tree Preservation Incentives

[Alex Hancock]

How do you incentivize tree preservation in your community? What gets the attention of the developers and actually results in trees being saved? I think regulations are especially important, but in the "carrot and stick" scenario, I'm curious what carrots are working...

 

- Alex, PlanIT Geo, St. Petersburg FL

[krobotanist]

Credits for undersized/unprotected trees to count towards mitigation/tree canopy/landscape requirements.  

Basically, not requiring preservation of smaller trees but, if they are healthy and will grow into a larger tree, and they are desirable protected species, then incentivizing their preservation in lieu of planting trees that don't stand as good a chance of survival.

[Alex Hancock]

@krobotanist That sounds like a nice trade-off for developers... keep viable trees and don't worry about planting new ones later. That's a win-win! 

[ArborologyKC]

Krobotanist, where are you located and is that an ordinance on the books or something you think should be? I think it's a great idea. I'm in the midwest and a lot of cities are adopting tree protection ordinances for development, but the fine tuning isn't there yet. They tend to be so restrictive with replacement trees as to completely remove forested spaces from reasonable development, are full of loopholes, or are completely neglecting long term forest health in their vision. Recently I completed an inventory with hundreds of nice 3-12" walnuts, elms and hackberries that don't count towards replacement diameter inches and won't be impacted by construction but there's no incentive to keep them and they aren't credited towards the 800 or so replacement diameter inches that are somehow supposed to fit on an approximately site. On that same site about 1/3 of the replacement inches are coming from thorny honeylocust and the entire understory is honeysuckle.