Growing Back Better

It’s fair to say that most of the trees destroyed in the derecho were planted at a time when their true value was not known. Also not as well understood in past generations of planting was how to select and locate trees to optimize their lifespans and their benefits to us.

We didn’t understand the essential role they play in the food web that keeps us alive. We didn’t know that non-native trees don’t feed native animals. We didn’t know that trees share nutrients and valuable information underground. We were only beginning to understand trees’ ability to clean our water and our air, and reduce urban heat. We didn’t know, it would seem, that planting street after street with ash trees was an invitation to blight. We didn’t know – or didn’t care – that a white oak easily provides ten times the ecosystem benefits of a Bradford Pear.

There remains a tremendous amount that we don’t understand about trees. But it is essential that the effort to replant our city be guided by what we do know. That is the purpose of this plan. ReLeaf Cedar Rapids is a plan of who, what, when, where, why, and how. It describes the role that each of us can play. It recommends trees by species. It devises a ten-year sequence for street and park planting. It makes recommendations for yards and provides some detailed instructions for tree planting and care. It does all this with the conviction that, as we tell our children, anything worth doing is worth doing the best that we can.

What We Learned from Others

While no sizable North American city has ever experienced an event as destructive to its canopy as the 2020 derecho, Galveston and Calgary lived through catastrophic weather events that led to massive citywide efforts to reforest. Both cities showed us how dramatic tree loss can be met with a dramatic commitment to recovery, and how central to that recovery is a methodical focus on every tree: its health, its needs, and its value. A similar focus drives this plan.

GALVESTON, TEXAS

In 2008, Galveston was hit by Hurricane Ike, its worst storm in more than a century. The island community lost an estimated 39 percent of its trees and 47 percent of its canopy. Being a smaller city than Cedar Rapids, this equated to roughly 40,000 trees, almost 11,000 of which were public. The City’s response was to commit to replanting 25,000 of those trees over the next five years. The plan was remarkable in the precision with which it ordered and budgeted the sequence of all public replanting. This was done across more then eighty parks, cemeteries, roads, public school campuses, public buildings, and parking lots, at a budget of $3,364,996.

CALGARY, ALBERTA

In September of 2014, a storm dropped nearly a foot of wet snow on a city in full leaf, damaging almost all its trees. While relatively few were killed, 350,000 out of 400,000 public trees required major pruning. Calgary has roughly ten times the population of Cedar Rapids but the lowest tax rate of any major city in Canada. In response to the storm, the City invested $47 million in just three years. It trimmed almost every damaged tree and refined an inventory system that keeps close track of all street and park trees, including data on each tree’s size, value, ecosystem impacts, and the party responsible for its maintenance. While Cedar Rapids has a tree database, it does not yet include park trees, and many of the data fields for each tree are not yet populated. Calgary’s system is a model worth emulating.