Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program

Transcription

1 Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program Program Update June October 2015 Biological Diversity S2. Land Use Planning: Reviewed Natural Resource Planning curriculum being developed by Vermont Natural Resource Council. Curriculum focuses on local implementation strategies to conserver natural resources at the local level. S3. Forest Management: Continue to support public tree inventories, management plan development and starting staff training. This past quarter: Summer Inventories: o Inventories completed or are in progress in the following communities: Springfield, Rockingham, Hinesburg, Milton, St. Albans, Lyndon, Brattleboro, and Barre City. o Inventories were coordinated with FPR District offices to conduct or support. o Supported VTrans to inventory Route 7 in South Burlington and Shelburne. Management Plans: Under contract with four RPCs to support to development of management plans. Communities include: Colchester, Vergennes, Swanton, Bristol, and Northfield. Johnson and Middlebury will develop their plans inhouse. Assisting VTrans with Shelburne Road report. Inventory System Reporting: Working with ANR IT do develop web based data analysis tool. Technical Tree Municipal Staff Training: Contracted with an urban forestry consultant to deliver one day trainings to the communities that have completed inventories in They include: Swanton, Colchester, Shelburne, Bristol, Middlebury, Vergennes, Johnson, and Northfield. Forest Health and Productivity S9. Monitor for Forest Health and Productivity Urban Forest Inventory and Analysis: Working with the Forest Service, Forest Health Program, and Vermont Monitoring Cooperative to start a statewide urban forest inventory and analysis (UFIA) starting in The effort will include 233 permanent

2 plots with all plots being visited on a 7 year rotation. The city of Burlington will have 200 plots; the other plots are in urbanized areas across Vermont. S11. Forest Health Outreach and Education: VTinvasives website: Continue to maintain VTInvasives.org. Partners are meeting to discuss needs and plan for an update funded through a VT Community Foundation grant. Contract is in place for updates. VTinvasives E News: 2 produced. Pest Outreach Coordinator: Supported development of Farm Bill grant to support position with enhanced services including community preparedness. Community Preparedness: Existing resources are being reviewed, updated and are in the process of being migrated to the Program s website, vtcommunityforestry.org. Forest Products and Ecosystems Services S27. Water Quality: Green Infrastructure Collaborative: Green Infrastructure Initiative is now renamed Green Infrastructure Collaborative and is housed at Sea Grant. Continue to support efforts of now renamed Collaborative. UNH Stormwater Center: UCF staff participated in a field trip to the UNH Stormwater Center to see demonstration installations and learn about green stormwater infrastructure successes and challenges. Municipal Assistance: A VAPDA grant for technical assistant and outreach to communities for local adoption of green stormwater infrastructure practices is in the final stages. The toolkit is now available online at vpic.org and outreach is occurring in regions. RROW Grant: Kicked off the Resilient Right of Ways grant project with a partners meeting to discuss supporting resources, opportunities, and challenges for the work ahead. One on one meetings are being planned to further dive into these issues. Complete Streets are Green Streets: Partnered with ACCD Richard Amore, and AOT Jane Brown, on a presentation about designing streets for mobility, the environment and community for ANR s Municipal Day. S31. Forest Based Recreation Town Forests and Recreation: Developing a grant to the Forest Service to support communities in town forest management with a particular focus on managing the magnitude of recreational pressures. The grant will include resource development, education and outreach, and financial assistance.

3 Finding Town Forests: Working on updating town forest description information on Program s website map. S34. Climate Change: Continue to work with private contractor to develop middle school curriculum, Trees for Vermont s Future, around the energy conservation benefits of trees. Supported selection of contractor to develop ANR s Climate Change website, and supported the creation of video vignettes around climate adaption for Vermont s forests with UVM intern. Land Ethic S39: Public understand of the value of forests Town Forest Centennial Celebration: o Voices of the Town Forest: Under contract with SP!KE Advertising to create 3 audio stories. Recordings have occurred and the work is being edited. They will be made available for the Town Forest Summit, online and in print version. Worked with UVM intern to develop 6 video stories about town forest champions across the state. o Young Writers Project: Still seeking nominations for the Young Writers Project around town forests. Winners will be invited to summit. o Webpages: Made substantial edits to vtcommunityforestry.org around the centennial. o Social Media Campaign: Working with SP!KE Advertising for a 4 week social media campaign around the centennial. Kick off will happen mid October. o Recognition: Thank You Notes: Recently launched a Town Forest Thank You campaign, to say thanks to Vermont town forests and the people who make them possible! Write a thank you note and share the love at our website. The notes will be shared via social media, on our site, and at the summit. Centennial Awards: Working with County Foresters and Cecilia s Community Forestry Class to recognize a model town forest in each county. County Foresters made the nominations and provided community contacts and the students will conduct interviews, develop their stories, and share them stories at the summit.

4 o Events: Summit: Coordinating with the Association of Vermont Conservation Commissions to hold a Community Conservation Summit on November 7 th at Vermont Technical College. Trek: Supported urban forestry trek coordinating by Bob, McCullough. Community Events: Continue to collect and share community events. o Commemorative piece: Working with a graphic designer to create a commemorative iron on patch to be given out at the summit. Arbor Day: o Growing Works of Art Contest: Plans are underway for our 2016 contest. Proposed theme is around Why trees? o Arbor Day Ceremony: Preparing for Council discussion on how to improve on Arbor Day programming. Big Trees: Efforts are underway to make improvements to our big tree information online and to our database. Upcoming Workshops: o October 10: Tree Stewards Conference, Bristol o November 7: Community Conservation Summit, Randolph S40. Media/Communications: Across the Fence: 2 episodes filmed: Inventories and Town Forests. Social Media: Continue to support Facebook and Twitter posts. Gearing up for town forest centennial campaign. Newsletter: TRE newsletter sent out in July and September. Next edition is November. Website: Continue to maintain and improve Program website: Media: Several stories about our inventory work, SOUL, and First Detectors were picked up by local papers, news channels, and VPR. Several times these were picked up through posts local partners shared on Front Porch Forums.

5 S421. Forestry Educational Programs: Forestry Learning Center: Efforts continue to develop the new online learning center now called Our Vermont Woods: A resource center for healthy forests. We are in the design phase of the site and have determined the look and feel, and logo. It s coming to life! Backyard Forest Stewardship Course: Efforts are underway to develop the second draft of the curriculum. On target for an early spring pilot. Professional Foresters Training: A year long monthly webinar series kicked off in September. The series target audience is professional foresters and provides information on managing forests in a changing world. The webinars will be archived on our new Our Vermont Woods website. TRAQ Training: In partnership with ISA, hosted a 3 day Tree Risk Assessment Qualification (TRAQ) training in Montpelier. S44. Educate and Engage the Public SOUL Tree Stewards: o After much effort to prepare for SOUL, enrollment was too low to hold. We are evaluating current efforts and preparing for a discussion at the Council meeting to plan for the future. o Held a workshop for the spring 15 SOUL graduates on proper pruning and tree health assessment at Middlebury College with Tim Parsons. o Discussions are underway on starting a regional initiative to support graduates. Forest Pest First Detectors: o Held a successful FD training in Montpelier in June with 20 participants. o Due to low enrollment, cancelled September training in Manchester. We are making plans to meet with program partners to discuss future plans for the program and supporting current FDs. o Developed survey to seek input from FDs on how to better support them. S60. Recognition Programs: Public Places Awards: Working with partners to improve program coordination and outreach. The program will be run again this year. Tree Stewards Awards: Awards program is moving to spring. We will announce in February and recognize recipients at the Arbor Day ceremony in May.

6 S51. Students and Educators: Summer/Fall Student Projects: o With support from DEC, we hosted a summer intern through UVM to do literature crawl to support the Resilient ROWs grant and the creation of videos around the voices of town forests. o Continuing to work with a graduate intern to support inventories and town forests work. o Working with UVM Community Forestry class on town forest recognition program. ANR Service Learning Team: Participating on ANR s new service learning team to improve the coordination and success of this work. AmeriCorps: Hosting a Vermont ECO AmeriCorps member, Diana Jaramillo, for a year to support work around the RROW grant. Legal, Institution, and Economic Framework S47. Caring for Canopy Grants: 2014 Grants: Closed all grants expect one that was extended Grants: Developed cooperative agreements with grantees, and grant monitoring. S51. Financial Partnerships Forest Service Reports: 5 grant progress reports were submitted, and one final report. Regional & National UCF Committee Work: o Participated in NA regional UCF meetings. Federal performance measure reporting: Preparing for annual federal reporting. UVM Extension: Entered into agreement for another year with Extension. Officially have signed MOU. Agency of Agriculture: Developed grant agreement to continue to support Forest Pest Outreach Coordinator at UVM Extension.

7 S58. Planning: Forest Action Plan and UCF Action Plan: Supporting the development of the Forest Action Plan, and engaging Council in developing UCF Action Plan. S59. Program Staffing: Staff went on a two day retreat to plan for the coming year and participate in team building exercises. S61. Council: Supporting Council/Program efforts including Executive Committee and member recruitment, updating guiding documents, council bios and meeting logistics. S62. Professional Development: Danielle continues participation in Vermont s Certified Public Managers course. Elise participated in a two day GIS course through VT Tech