Conservation leader says citywide action plan prioritizes Louisville trees

Since the start of the year, the Louisville Metro Government and nonprofit TreesLouisville have been working on a long-term plan promoting tree canopy growth across Jefferson County. Residents can provide feedback for the Louisville Tree Plan, which is expected to be released early next year.

Back in 2015, a city-commissioned report found that tree cover had been shrinking in recent years and was sizably lower in Louisville’s urban core — the old city limits — compared to the rest of the county.

Trees provide shade that cools the surrounding environment. That cooling is important for cities with heat islands, where urban cores are hotter than the surrounding areas.

The temperature difference between Louisville and surrounding rural areas has been particularly stark. A study about a decade ago looked at 50 years of data and found the average 10-year difference in Louisville was nearly twice as high as the next major U.S. city.

As development tears down nature to create buildings and roads, those structures take in and radiate heat. These heat islands have damaging effects on health, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency .

In 2022, TreesLouisville reported that the city’s overall tree canopy increased, but found the cover in some areas still decreased. Its executive director, Cindi Sullivan, is part of the Louisville Tree Plan’s advisory group.

LPM News’ Jacob Munoz spoke with Sullivan about how the plan is being developed. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

How did [the Louisville Tree Plan] first come about? And how far into the future does it look?

It's an urban forest master plan, and it is a high-level, long-term plan to ensure that our tree canopy is preserved and enhanced. And what we're looking at with this urban forest master plan is, what are the resources that we have? What are we doing well, what are we not doing well? And how can we get to where we want to be? This is a dynamic plan. This is not a plan that's going to sit on a shelf.

When you talk about canopy loss and canopy gain, you're talking about long term. Canopy loss is an event. If a new development occurs, and the 100 acres of trees [are] destroyed, that's an event. Canopy gains, on the other hand, is a process. You plant a tree and maybe five years later, you're seeing results and it continues to grow.

We need to look at trees as an invaluable asset. Green infrastructure is just as important if not more important [than] gray infrastructure. Green infrastructure continues to get better over time. Gray infrastructure starts to depreciate as soon as you put it in, right?

[TreesLouisville] found that 39% of Louisville’s land is covered by tree canopy, which is a slight increase from 2012 to 2019. And we also know that those trees aren't equitably distributed across Jefferson County. What are the sorts of reasons for that?

Redlining, unfortunately, has a lot to do with the disparities in our tree canopy, because we know that redlined neighborhoods today have 21% overall canopy and greenlined neighborhoods have 48% canopy . And it's that decades-long disenfranchisement or marginalization that has created these disparities. There’s a lot of people [who] don't own their own homes in some of our neighborhoods, and those are situations where even if you wanted trees…if your landlord doesn't want you to have a tree, you're not going to get one.

This project received more than 200 applications for its advisory group. Many of those who are serving on it are people who are connected in city government, or tied to universities or local corporations, not necessarily from conservation or environmental backgrounds. What kind of effect do you hope it has in moving the project forward?

In order to be able to get where we need to be, we've got to have the buy-in of the people [who] are making the decisions. I guess part of it too, is that if you just said “Oh, well, we want a bunch of tree people to participate in this plan,” you're going to hear the same stuff, “Oh, trees are good and we need to do better.” But I think part of the process with the Louisville Tree Plan is improving the understanding of just how important an urban tree canopy is.

An urban forest master plan is really all about community engagement and public awareness and creating a mindset within the people that can make improvements, no matter who they are, to make a decision that the urban forest is important and it does need to be considered an integral part of our infrastructure.

We discussed this advisory group that’s part of the master plan process. But there’s also another group. That’s the Equity Council. Can you tell me a little bit about, sort of, what their work is going to be towards?

We wanted to ensure that there were people from west Louisville, southwest Louisville and south central Louisville, at the table helping to make these decisions, because we know that those are the areas of our community that have the lowest canopy.

So we very intentionally put together an equity council with the task of saying, “Okay, this is what we've heard. Now here are the goals of this plan.” And from setting those goals, then we'll get recommendations from the experts at the table to ensure that we're getting to where we need to be.

How do you look at the work of trying to attract those kinds of people who maybe can understand that trees are important, but are maybe not sure of the role that they play, or maybe need to be motivated to get on board?

Unless we have the buy-in of corporations, campuses, residents…we're not going to be able to get to where we need to be. People ask me, how can I help to improve the canopy? Well, the simplest answer is, plant a tree. The answer is right there in your front yard or your backyard. And tell your neighbors to do the same.

Can you describe what kinds of action items the public could expect to find in a final report?

I think that we're going to see immediate and tangible recommendations and goals to create a more equitable tree canopy. I think that that's one of the most important things that we're hearing, we've got to do a better job in the neighborhoods that don't have good canopy.

That's one thing. And I think the other is, we've got to be able to get creative and think outside the box. Just because we've always done things in regard to maintaining our trees or caring for our trees or planting our trees, doesn't mean that that's the way that it should continue to be.