CITY OF CAPE CANAVERAL MARKS 31 YEARS OF “TREE CITY” DESIGNATION
CONTRIBUTING WRITER: Zachary Eichholz, Sustainability Program Manager + Resilience Planner, City of Cape Canaveral
Recently the City of Cape Canaveral received a letter from the Arbor Day Foundation congratulating the City for continuing its designation as a Tree City. Currently, Cape Canaveral is one of only 3,600 communities nationwide to have this honor. The City has proudly held this designation since 1989. Founded in 1972, the Arbor Day Foundation is the largest 501(c)3 nonprofit membership organization dedicated to planting trees and other reforestation efforts. The foundation has more than 1 million partners and supporters that together have helped to plant more than 350 million trees in neighborhoods, communities, cities, and forests throughout not only the US but the world.
To qualify for the Tree City status, communities must meet four core standards. First, someone must be responsible for the care of all trees, this usually includes a professional forester or arborist (the City currently has an on-staff arborist); second, a Tree City must be guided by a tree care ordinance (Article II. – Tree Protection); next, a community must designate a portion of its budget toward planting, care and removal of City trees (Sec. 102-54. – Tree replacement standards); and last, a community must recite an official Arbor Day proclamation and demonstrate support for Arbor Day.
The City takes green infrastructure and its urban canopy very seriously, for trees (and plants) can provide numerous environmental, economic, and social benefits. Such benefits include reducing stormwater runoff to the lagoon, improving air quality, lowering local temperatures, and sequestering carbon dioxide emissions. Recent examples of large-scale tree plantings in the City include the planting of over 350 new native trees at the Long Point Estuary property in 2019, 18 red mangroves along the City’s lagoon shoreline through its Adopt-A-Mangrove Program in 2020, and in 2021 at Canaveral City Park the City will be planting thousands of new native and Florida friendly trees and plants at the site for the Multi-Generational Facility; increasing the park’s species diversity and overall canopy and ground coverage.
The City will apprise residents of new plantings, best management practices and make available educational resources via our partner organizations as often as possible.
