Last year Mayor Nickels issued his Urban Forest Management Plan challenging Seattle to address its shrinking urban forest. Recent findings show Seattle’s tree canopy coverage has decreased to just 18 percent. The plan proposes restoring canopy coverage to 30 percent over the next 30 years by working with public and private entities to plant nearly 650,000 trees over that time period.

In order to achieve its goals, the plan asks everyone in Seattle to become better tree stewards, including the City itself. City departments will review their tree care policies and update them, if necessary, to current best-management practices. As part of that effort, DPD has undertaken an effort to review and revise the City’s tree protection and replacement regulations for private property.

The first step of DPD’s process has been to gather comments received during the development of the Urban Forest Management Plan. The goals of the plan, developed by nine City departments with input from tree and environmental advocacy groups, set a high bar for any update of regulations DPD proposes.

The next step was to assemble the Emerald City Task Force in the fall of 2007. The task force was made up of 12 representatives of the architecture, landscape architecture, development and tree care professions. The group was charged with providing a critique of the City’s existing regulations, reviewing what other communities are currently doing, and providing a set of recommendations to DPD staff as they explore ways to update Seattle’s regulations. A summary of their recommendations can be found accompanying this article. (See sidebar.) The task force’s full recommendation letter will be available online soon.

DPD staff is now developing policy proposals to share with tree and environmental advocacy groups, homeowners, developers and Seattle residents. Over the next several months we will engage in conversations with these groups to revise and improve our proposals as we develop legislation to submit to City Council later this year. Visit DPD’s web site at www.seattle.gov/dpd for a link to the project web site, updates on meeting information, and other opportunities to provide input or ask questions.

The Urban Forest Management Plan can be found at:
www.seattle.gov/environment/trees.

For more information on DPD’s efforts to update the City’s tree regulations, contact:

Scott Dvorak
DPD Planner
(206) 615-1447
scott.dvorak@seattle.gov