Los Angeles, a City Known for Its Freeways, Is About to Plant a Shit Ton of Trees

[babylonsister]

Los Angeles, a City Known for Its Freeways, Is About to Plant a Shit Ton of Trees
The effort starts with its first-ever forest officer.
Jackie Flynn Mogensen


Los Angeles, the sprawling city of freeways, thinks its future depends on trees. And it may be right: Research shows trees improve air and water quality, store carbon, and can even reduce stress. All these benefits don’t seem to be lost on Mayor Eric Garcetti, who in late April announced his version of a Green New Deal for the city. Among other measures, he mandated that every new city-owned building be all-electric, established a goal to phase out styrofoam, called for a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, and, crucially, tasked the city with the goal of planting a whopping 90,000 trees by the end of 2021. “With flames on our hillsides and floods in our streets,” Garcetti said in a press release at the time, “cities cannot wait another moment to confront the climate crisis with everything we’ve got.”

The ambitious tree-planting project falls under the purview of Rachel Malarich, the city’s forest officer—a job that was just created in August to “oversee the growth of Los Angeles’ urban forest” as part of Garcetti’s Green New Deal. An arborist with more than a decade of experience in urban forestry, Malarich was appointed just days before the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report that emphasized the role of trees and forests in combatting climate change. The project will grow what’s already the largest urban forest in the country, making what happens in Los Angeles an important model for other cities looking to go green.

more...

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/10/los-angeles-green-new-deal-forest-officer/

[IndyOp]

1. Gil - 1 million. Give people who own private property incentives

Remember - LA used to be a lot like the garden of eden, fruit trees everywhere

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Please, no eucalypts. They're the oil-soaked rags of the plant world. nt

[jaysunb]

3. + 1000. Nt

[Codeine]

7. I live inland of Los Angeles

and this area was planted with millions of those goddamned trees back in the day, mostly as windbreaks in the face of the Santa Annas. Starting maybe 20 years ago cities and counties started cutting them down left and right because they used so much groundwater. I’m usually loathe to see a tree cut down but they can’t eradicate those trees fast enough to suit me.

[hunter]

8. They're a wickedly invasive species.

Furthermore, the only thing that grows under them is poison oak.

When I was a kid my parents owned a small farm. On the other side of a ravine from the farm, two or three hundred yards away from our house, there was a small grove of eucalyptus trees. One year during the Santa Ana winds the inevitable fire came and those trees exploded. The radiant heat was incredible, you couldn't face it. Fruit trees in our orchard facing this part of the fire dropped their leaves a few days later. Some of them died.

This fire came on so fast there was no time to evacuate the area. Fortunately no lives or homes were lost, but many outbuildings were. Our neighbor's horses were terrified but not seriously injured.

This was about a dozen years before the horrible Oakland Hills Fire which was partly fueled by eucalyptus trees.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. push the buildings underground, roll up the asphalt and concrete

Lots more room for trees, then.

I like trees better than cars.

[NewJeffCT]

5. Good luck to her

does LA have the water supply to handle 90,000 more trees?

[babylonsister]

6. Great question. I have no idea. nt