Science & Nature
Chicago’s Parks Are Full of Trees, But No One Knows How Many. They’re About To Get Counted
A pair of large cottonwood trees in River Park on Chicago’s North Side. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
The Chicago Park District consists of more than 600 parks, and within those parks, there are a lot of trees.
Exactly how many?
No one really knows.
“We don’t have great data,” Cathy Breitenbach, director of the department of cultural and natural resources, told Park District commissioners at a board meeting Wednesday morning.
In recent years, the district has bulked up its forestry program and has been aggressively planting new trees, Breitenbach said, but it has done so in the absence of a firm tree count. Estimates are somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000.
Information on the species composition and health of the district’s tree canopy is also lacking.
The district is proposing to close that knowledge gap with a tree inventory, to be conducted by Davey Resources Group, paid for with a $1.3 million grant administered by Morton Arboretum, Breitenbach told commissioners.
Once this assessment is complete, the district will use the findings to develop a management plan that will guide the park’s approach to the growth and maintenance of its trees.
A healthy tree canopy is an important asset, Breitenbach said, providing ecosystem benefits such as cooling shade and stormwater absorption.
Yet storms and pests have cost the city tens of thousands of trees in recent years.
The Park District notably opted not to inoculate its ash trees against emerald ash borer, in part because parks’ mixed canopies could better withstand the loss of a single species than parkways lined with ash. Many of the district’s dead ash trees have since been repurposed, either as artwork or as features in natural areas and nature play spaces.
The proposal for the tree inventory passed with the board’s unanimous approval.
Commissioner Robert Castaneda, who is himself a TreeKeeper as part of a program run by Openlands, applauded the focus on trees.
“We need help planting trees and maintaining trees,” he said, and encouraged more people to become involved in caring for trees in public spaces.
Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 | [email protected]
