Appreciating Oregon’s Trees

Scott Fogarty’s OregonLive guest column, Appreciating Oregon’s Trees, outlines a visionary way of valuing trees.

An excerpt from the piece:

By recognizing trees as capital assets, the I-205 project secured funding through a Nature in Neighborhoods capital grant from Metro’s 2006 voter-approved natural areas bond measure. The result: Thousands of native trees and shrubs will serve the neighborhoods and cities along the path—and the entire region–for years to come. And if ODOT Region 1 succeeds in inspiring other ODOT regions to fund greening of transportation corridors, Oregon may become a model for other states.

Greening our cities and transportation corridors encourages active, healthy lifestyles, protects our drinking water and cleans our air — reducing pollutants that exacerbate asthma and other respiratory diseases.

It also secures jobs in Oregon’s number two agricultural industry, the nursery industry. That’s one reason Boring-based tree grower J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co. has joined a budding list of local businesses supporting the I-205 greening project. Planting more trees in the “nursery state” provides jobs for arborists, city workers and others who maintain the trees’ health.

The piece concludes:

Considering trees as assets is a capital idea. It’s good for Oregon and our citizens. It’s time our state, known for its forestry industry as well as its green innovations, shows that its trees are appreciated.

Read the complete story here.

–Teri Ruch