Beautiful, healthy, and safe trees and greenspaces are vital to communities for maintaining the quality of life for residents, revitalizing downtowns, and attracting businesses and visitors. Trees provide many practical benefits, for they improve human health and comfort, enhance property values, cleanse the air of pollutants, sequester carbon, reduce heating and cooling costs, and mitigate stormwater runoff.
Trees also nourish and inspire the human spirit.
Proper planting, protection, and management of the green infrastructure truly are essential for healthy communities. When this extension urban forestry program started in 1991 with U.S. Forest Service support, only 28 percent of Pennsylvania cities and boroughs had tree care programs. Most street trees and public parks were in poor condition. The importance of proper tree care and planting for safety, economic values, and environmental benefits to people was not well understood, so many municipalities thought they could not afford spending their limited resources on trees. Yet they suffered from declining business districts, bore the costs of storm cleanups from poorly maintained trees, endured power outages, and sometimes were sued for injuries and property damage caused by hazardous trees.