THE LEAFLET

Each year on Arbor Day, Casey Trees releases our Tree Report Card where we analyze the state of D.C.’s urban forest and grade its progress towards our 40 percent tree canopy goal.

At its heart the tree report card (TRC) is a benchmark to measure the previous year’s efforts and see what areas we and others working to re-tree D.C. can improve on.

For the fourth consecutive year D.C.’s urban forest received a B -.

The overall grade given is combination of four metrics:

• Tree Coverage (A-)
• Tree Health (B-)
• Tree Planting (A+)
• Tree Protection (F)*

A focus of this year’s report is D.C.’s parks.

Parks present an amazing opportunity for the District and its partners to reach the 40 percent goal. Federally owned parks like Rock Creek Park, Lincoln Park and the National Mall are all iconic, integral parts of D.C. and provide numerous tangible and intangible benefits.

It’s hard to imagine those parks without trees — yet some in D.C already are. In fact, 87 D.C. Parks have less than 20 percent canopy.  Even worse, is the fact that many of these trees are in poor condition or health. Together we can work to increase the amount of trees in D.C. parks.

One of the first steps is conducting inventories to better understand the health and make up of trees in these parks. You can sign up for an inventory today.

To see deeper analysis of our TRC please visit our website.

*While the tree protection grade was an F the Tree Canopy Protection Amendment Act of 2016 has passed both votes of the D.C. Council and is currently awaiting approval for law.