enterprise THE DAVIS
FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2022
‘Spruced up’
UCD’s virus rate still high as mandatory testing ends
“Breathe easy and thank a tree.” Marvin Lopez and Doris Wu, students in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden Learning by Leading Arboretum Ambassador program, hang an oversized tag on the UC Davis campus to help promote the benefits of trees.
By Caleb Hampton Enterprise staff writer
Dawson Diaz, UC Davis/ Courtesy photo
Tree tags inform and engage By Katie F. Hetrick Special to The Enterprise Davis’ urban forest provides public health, environmental and economic benefits to residents every day. To highlight this important resource, Tree Davis and the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden have teamed up to install educational tree tags across the landscape. “Our trees need to be celebrated for all the benefits they bring our community,” said
Erin Donley Marineau, executive director of Tree Davis. “These tags are reminders and also invitations for everyone to share their appreciation.” For the next couple of months, 50 trees, spanning the city of Davis and the UC Davis campus, will be home to informational tags inviting passersby to engage in appreciation of the trees they encounter and learn about the health and wellbeing benefits the trees confer.
Using research and literature as the foundation for their messages, the tree team — including Tree Davis staff, UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden staff and interns from their innovative environmental leadership program, Learning by Leading — seeks to make the essential, yet sometimes unseen, benefits of trees tangible to community members. “With this project, we hope to raise the visibility to the existing benefits of Davis’s canopy with messages that support ‘Nature Rx,'” said Stacey Parker, director of public
horticulture and engagement for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. "Getting outside and enjoying the environment is akin to writing yourself a prescription for improved physical and mental health.” Throughout spring and summer, growing numbers of trees will continue to don tags throughout the city and on campus. “Our city’s urban forest is contiguous across property boundaries and benefits
After a momentary decline last week, the COVID-19 positivity rate at UC Davis shot back up over the past several days, reaching one of its highest points during the pandemic as the campus concludes its mandatory testing. The last day of UC Davis' biweekly testing requirement is today. The average test positivity rate between June 10-19, the most recent period reported, was 2.5%, according to data published on UC Davis’ COVID-19 dashboard. While the positivity rate dipped slightly last week, it has since rebounded, continuing an upward trend that began in March and has reached the highest rates at any point in the pandemic apart from a surge in January driven by the Omicron variant. In total, UC Davis conducted 5,868 COVID-19 tests on asymptomatic students, staff and faculty from June 10-19, with 145 of those tests coming back positive. Over the past 30 days, the campus’ asymptomatic testing has identified 869 positive results, which account for 13% of all asymptomatic COVID-19 cases the campus testing program has detected since it
See TAGS, Page A6
See VIRUS, Page A6
Court puts target on California gun laws Campus’ top cop to lead state
branch of mental health board
By Ben Christopher CalMatters The U.S. Supreme Court issued one of its most significant gun law rulings in more than a decade on Thursday, tossing out New York state’s tight restrictions on who can carry a concealed gun in public. Gun-rights activists are celebrating the 6-3 decision, while advocates for stricter gun laws decry it. Both agree that California’s similar law may be next to be challenged. The ruling likely marks the most dramatic expansion of gun rights in the U.S. since 2008, when the Supreme Court clarified for the first time that the Second Amendment’s right “to
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Arts ������������������B1 Events ��������������B5 Pets ������������������ A3 Classifieds ������ A5 Forum �������������� A4 Sports ��������������B8 Comics ������������B4 Obituaries �������� A5 The Wary I �������� A2
By Caleb Hampton Enterprise staff writer
Adobe Stock
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out New York’s tight restrictions on who can carry a concealed gun in public. California’s gun restrictions may be next. keep and bear” firearms applies to individual citizens, not just state militia members. But that ruling only affirmed the right
WEATHER Saturday: Sunny and hot. High 100. Low 60.
for “self-defense within the home,” leaving states with wide discretion over
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UC Davis Police Chief Joseph Farrow is set to become president of the board of directors of the California branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), one of the nation’s most prominent mental health advocacy organizations. Farrow will begin a threeyear term as the branch’s president on July 1, UC Davis said Wednesday in a news release. NAMI, which was founded in 1979 and today has more than 600 local affiliates across the country, provides support,
education and advocacy around issue related to mental illness. FARROW “Our UCD police role is to chief be a voice for victims, family members and practitioners working in mental illness,” Farrow told the campus news service. “I’m surrounded by a tremendous amount of talent on the board.” The UC Davis police chief was elected to
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