Miami-Dade County has fallen behind on a decade-old pledge to cover more than 30 percent of the county with tree canopy, widening inequalities across the region as wealthier neighborhoods remain in the shade and poorer ones burn, raising energy bills and emergency room visits.
In response to these issues, outlined in an investigation published by the Miami Herald earlier this year, commissioners asked Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s office to develop a plan to keep the county green.
The county released a draft urban forestry plan on Friday that calls for building community partnerships, stricter maintenance schedules and seeking more grant funding.
“We needed to come together again and figure out how to achieve that goal,” said Jane Gilbert, the county’s first heat management director, who drafted the plan. “We want residents, businesses and stakeholders to all enjoy the benefits that trees provide and work together to maintain them.”
Read more: Miami-Dade County’s urban tree planting project fails to protect residents from record heat
To reach its goal, the plan makes clear the county will need to make an “all hands on deck” effort: The county owns only 12 percent of developable land, and county officials say they have limited control over where trees can be planted.
The county will continue to work with school districts and religious organizations that own large tracts of land, hire professional arborists to properly prune the county’s trees, and launch an ambassador program to educate local residents on why trees are good for their communities.
Amida Frey, left, pulls a wagon loaded with trees she received for free during Miami-Dade County’s “Adopt a Tree” event outside the Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center in Cutler Bay, Fla., Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023. More than 2,500 trees were up for adoption during the event, which drew long lines of participants.
It’s not enough to just plant trees, you need to nurture them
Gilbert said that as a result of “aggressive county efforts,” tree canopy cover has increased from 12 percent to 20 percent since the county set a goal in 2006 of 30 percent tree canopy cover by 2030, but the rate of increase has plateaued since 2016.
While more trees will need to be planted to meet the goal, Gilbert said it’s important to keep those trees that are already in the ground because they will grow first and provide more shade.
The Herald investigation also highlighted a lack of maintenance that led to the deaths of the county’s trees and a lack of uniform data to measure all tree planting efforts. After more than 17 years and millions of dollars spent, the investigation found the county is nowhere near meeting its goals.
A big lesson the county learned is that trees need just as much care as roads and buildings. Trees under five years old are highly vulnerable to wind, rain, and road weeding. All it takes is a single storm to kill a tiny sapling.
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The county said it wants to prioritize areas with sparse trees and plant them at bus stops and other places where people wait in the sun.
Currently, the county does not have the staff to maintain parks, roads and environmentally protected areas (which are usually wild forests). The county would like to add other areas to its list of officially protected lands and protect more land from development.
Recently, the Broward County Commission adopted an ordinance to regulate the tree pruning industry, requiring all businesses and municipalities that perform tree pruning to obtain a Broward County Tree Pruner License to perform the work. Pruning keeps trees healthy, but cutting too much removes the tree from providing shade and exposes it to wood-eating insects.
Miami-Dade County is considering a tree pruning ordinance for Broward County and said it wants to recruit professional arborists to help set standards for best pruning and trimming practices and to act as ambassadors to get homeowners involved in saving and planting trees.
For some, trees can be a pain to maintain—they can bang into fences or warp concrete if not trimmed back—but when cared for, trees not only provide a needed respite from the heat, they also purify storm runoff and absorb pollutants.
Invasive trees that aren’t tough enough to withstand Miami’s tropical climate also need to be cut down — one example is the fig tree, the official tree of Bangkok, which caused earlier-than-expected power outages during a hurricane in 2016. The county wants to offer woodworking classes so people can salvage trees and give them new life.
The county is also taking climate change into consideration when selecting trees to plant, as it sees a shift in tree species suited to South Florida’s tropical climate.
“We want to be proactive about which species we prioritize for the future,” Gilbert said.
Read more: What to do if your Miami-Dade neighborhood needs more trees
There are various grants available, including a $10 million grant from the U.S. Forest Service to plant trees over the next five years, but with maintenance costs, the county will need much more funding to reach its goal of planting 300,000 trees.
The county plans to finalize the proposed tree canopy plan by November after holding public workshops to hear community input. The next workshop will be held virtually on Thursday, July 25, and if you can’t attend, an in-person workshop will be held on August 1 at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center. Feedback is also being accepted online.
Ashley Mizunaji is a climate change reporter at the Miami Herald, funded through a partnership between the Lynn and Lewis Wolfson II Family Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners.