The City of Ann Arbor Office of Sustainability and Innovations (OSI) is announcing the A2ZERO goal of planting 10,000 trees on private property throughout the community has been achieved — and six years ahead of schedule. This goal is one of over 40 actions outlined in the city’s A2ZERO carbon neutrality plan, which calls for “preserving and enhancing the local tree canopy” by planting 10,000 trees on private property and 10,000 trees on public property by the year 2030. This action is included in Strategy 6 of the A2ZERO plan, which is to “enhance the resilience of our people and our place.”
“Trees store carbon and help to reduce air pollution, stormwater runoff, urban heat and energy usage — making a healthy tree canopy an important part of keeping our community green, healthy and resilient to a changing climate,” said Sean Reynolds, OSI senior analyst and the creator and lead on the 10,000 Trees Initiative. “And that doesn’t stop with the trees lining our streets and shading our parks — it also means growing and maintaining the trees in our own backyards.”
That’s where the 10,000 Trees Initiative comes in: helping private property owners to plant and maintain trees with programs like the FreeTree Giveaways, through which residents of Washtenaw County can pick up free seedlings and take them home to plant. The 10,000 Trees Initiative, in conjunction with the city’s forestry and natural area preservation (NAP) divisions, was also recently awarded a $1 million grant from American Forests as part of the USDA Forest Service, Urban and Community Forestry Program’s Inflation Reduction Act funding. This funding will go toward private property tree planting and maintenance programs in historically disinvested communities, also at no cost to residents.
“Now that we’ve reached 10,000 trees, we’re going to keep up the momentum,” notes Reynolds. “We’ve helped plant 10,000 in the county, but now we want to reach 10,000 in Ann Arbor. We also want to make sure the trees we’ve planted are thriving and growing to provide the benefits our community needs.” To that end, OSI is launching a 10,000 Trees Survival Study to check up on each tree planted in the city through the initiative and provide care recommendations to residents as needed.
“Achieving this goal is incredibly meaningful to our carbon neutrality work, and to ourselves as residents of Tree Town, USA,” said OSI Director Dr. Missy Stults. “When the pandemic hit, we had to pivot. We couldn’t do a lot of the work that we’d been planning to. But that gave us the opportunity to lift up this program, and now here we are, reaching our goal early! I’m so grateful that Ann Arborites have embraced this initiative so wholeheartedly, and I encourage anyone who hasn’t yet to learn more, because it will take all of us to reach our A2ZERO goal of community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030.”
To learn more about the 10,000 Trees Initiative, visit www.a2gov.org/10ktrees or email Reynolds at sreynolds@a2gov.org. To learn more about the city’s A2ZERO carbon neutrality plan, which supports the 10,000 Trees Initiative and dozens of other programs to advance the city’s goal of achieving a just transition to community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030, visit www.a2zero.org.
