“A community is not resilient unless those benefits that we have from natural resources, like urban trees, are distributed in a way that all people are benefiting from them. And we do know that we have areas of the city that have lower canopy cover and some of those are associated also with lower income communities and marginalized communities. And arguably those are the people [who] would be most benefited by ecosystem services and the benefits of trees.”
This week on the show, a conversation with Sarah Mincey and Hannah Gregory of Canopy Bloomington, an organization dedicated to community engagement with the urban forest.
Sarah Mincey is a co-founder of the organization, and now serves as Vice President on their board. She's a Clinical Associate Professor at the O'Neil School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Director of the Integrated Program in the Environment and Managing Director of IU's Environmental Resilience Institute.
An ISA Certified Arborist, Hannah Gregory has served as the Forestry Director at Canopy Bloomington, and is currently a GIS and Natural Resources Specialist at PlanIt Geo
Engaging with the urban forest
Did you know that black locust trees are rot resistant, and therefore make great fence posts? Oak firewood burns slowly, while pine and cedar catch quickly and burn fast. Red bud flowers are edible, and mulberries are one of the first fruits to ripen here in Southern Indiana.
There was a time in human history in which all of us would know these things (and more) about the trees that grow around us. We would need to know, for day-to-day survival.
These days many of us suffer from what some arborists refer to as “tree blindness”
We can’t identify the various species that grow around us, and we often don’t notice trees at all unless we need some shade on a hot sunny day–or a fallen branch has blocked the road after a storm.
My guests on today’s show hope to address our lack of tree-awareness.
They work with Canopy Bloomington, an organization with a mission to, engage the Bloomington community in planting and caring for our urban forest together, in order to build a resilient and equitably green city for all.
They organize community tree plantings based on data about which areas of the city are lacking tree cover. They also run a youth training program call Youth Tree Tenders where high school students get hand-on experience on tree care as a summer job, and help maintain the city's young trees.
Hear more about Canopy Bloomington in this week's episode.
Note: Here's the link to the Blossom Bathing experience I mentioned at Masumoto Family Farm in California's Central Valley.
Music on this Episode:
The Earth Eats theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey.
Additional music on this episode from the artists at Universal Production Music.
Credits:
Special thanks this week for production support from Leo Paes.
The Earth Eats’ team includes: Eoban Binder, Alexis Carvajal, Alex Chambers, Toby Foster, Leo Paes, Daniella Richardson, Samantha Shemenaur, Payton Whaley and Harvest Public Media.
Earth Eats is produced, engineered and edited by Kayte Young. Our executive producer is Eric Bolstridge.
