Sunday Speaker Series
March 13: Restoring Our Tree Canopy and the Chicago Regional Trees Initiative
Though many of us in the Sierra Club already count ourselves as tree huggers, it turns out that we really do need trees—and that trees really do need our help.
Trees clean our air and water, reduce flooding, create wildlife habitat, improve our property values, and provide other significant social and health benefits. In short, trees enhance our lives. Unfortunately, over the last several decades, the Chicago area has lost much of its tree canopy. Millions of ash and elm trees have died due to disease. Invasive plants like buckthorn and honeysuckle have crowded out healthy new oak trees. And of course, relentless development has taken a serious toll of its own.
So please join us in March as Lydia Scott, director of the Chicago Region Trees Initiative (CRTI) at the Morton Arboretum, shares her knowledge and insights on the threats to our tree canopy. You also will learn about an amazing project to restore the tree canopy in local communities.
Register now to join us on March 13.
CRTI is the largest group in the country collaborating to combine knowledge and skills in order to build a healthier, more diverse regional forest. CRTI brings together the expertise and resources of leading organizations and agencies across the seven-county metropolitan region. Its goal is to make a significant, measurable improvement to the regional forest and the lives of its inhabitants by the year 2050. Under Lydia’s direction, CRTI is working to inspire people to value trees, to improve the region’s tree canopy, to reduce threats to trees, and to enhance oak ecosystems.
CRTI's vision is to ensure that:
- The region’s tree population is broadly understood and valued.
- Collaborative management opportunities are identified and enacted.
- Measurable improvements toward the health and vigor of the region’s trees are identified and established.
- Public awareness and support is developed to maintain our urban forest and enhance its health.
CRTI is developing its strategy based on findings from the 2020 Chicago Region Tree Census. The census was conducted by the Morton Arboretum and the U.S. Forest Service.
The presentation is another in a series of family-friendly online environmental and outdoor talks sponsored by the Woods & Wetlands Group. The programs are held at 7 p.m. on the second Sunday of each month. (Our February meeting was postponed a week due to the Super Bowl.) Programs are free and open to the public. Advance registration is required to get the login instructions.