The $1 million grant Orlando City Council accepted earlier this month from the U.S. Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry program will support the city’s mission to grow tree canopy coverage to 40%, citywide, by the year 2040.
Although right now, the citywide average is 27% canopy cover, some neighborhoods already meet or exceed the 40% goal, according to a city spokesperson. For example, the small Camellia Gardens neighborhood is currently at 60% tree canopy coverage.
But elsewhere in Orlando, significant tree canopy coverage gaps exist, with disproportionately less coverage for low-to-moderate-income neighborhoods, compared to middle-to-upper-income ones. The city’s Families, Parks and Recreation Department (FPR) identified those gaps in 2022, using tools like the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) and American Forests’ interactive Tree Equity Score map.
“We found that in our lower income neighborhoods, predominantly neighborhoods of color, we had much less tree canopy than in our higher income, predominantly white neighborhoods,” said FPR Director Lisa Early.
That discrepancy reflects a wider, national trend: On average, neighborhoods of color have 11% less tree canopy cover compared to white neighborhoods, according to one new study published in npj Urban Sustainability. That means neighborhoods of color lose out on more of the public health benefits trees provide.
Initially, FPR staff launched a pilot version of its Tree Equity Initiative, focusing on two neighborhoods with disproportionately less canopy cover — Richmond Heights and Carver Shores — and planting several hundred trees there. Now, the federal grant will allow Orlando to take the Tree Equity Initiative citywide.
Early said the funding will also help the city explore expanding its youth employment opportunities to include forestry positions: at least four, to start, but potentially up to ten.
“[We’ll] put them through the training, and then actually have them work as interns with our forestry staff, so they can see what it's like to have a job in this field,” Early said.
The funding will also help the city develop a system to respond to and support low-income city residents with concerns about potentially dangerous trees on their property, especially when it comes to hurricane season.
Typically, the city isn’t responsible for removing, pruning or planting trees on private property.
“We often get calls from residents saying, ‘I'm really afraid of this tree, I don't know what to do,’” Early said. “And we've never really had a mechanism in place or a funding stream in place to be able to address it; it's really been up to the resident to resolve that issue.”
But the new grant changes that, according to Early, by providing a funding stream for the city to contract a firm to trim or remove dangerous trees on private property — only for eligible low-income residents. That kind of assistance won’t be immediately available, since the city still has to create a system for it.
“We're building out the process,” Early said. “And my guess is that we will pilot it first, so we may pick, again, one or two target neighborhoods to pilot it in, so that we can tweak it and make sure that it works before we take it more broadly through the city.”
Early said she expects that process will take three to four months.
