Tampa’s tree canopy is shrinking. Can anyone save it for the shade?
Lorraine Parrino, dressed in a forest green polo and her eyelids dusted with blue eye shadow, stepped to the podium armed with documents about Tampa’s trees.
She kept her head down, reading word for word from her notes. Parrino had a reprimanding tone, like a disappointed parent.
“It takes 50 years for a tree to reach grand status, yet Tampa continues to take these giants for granted by destroying them,” Parrino said.
Minutes earlier, Tampa’s board that reviews exemptions to zoning regulations was presented with a plan to tear down a home near Bayshore Boulevard to make room for a larger one.
The problem: Two grand trees, a southern live oak with a canopy towering over most of the plot, and a spindly American elm, were in the way. The oak could live for hundreds of years, one board member said.
When one of Tampa’s grand trees, one with a trunk diameter of 32 inches or more, is in jeopardy, Parrino and her fellow Tampa Tree Advocacy Group members often try to save it.
Yet Tampa’s lush tree canopy has shrunk in the last decade by an amount roughly equivalent to clear-cutting four Davis Islands, according to a study released earlier this year.
The coverage offered by the city’s award-winning tree canopy has plunged to a level that experts say could have consequences for public health.
Across Tampa, however, city workers, researchers and community members are pushing to not only grow the city’s tree canopy but save what remains.
Parrino is one of them.
After urging the preservation of the two trees on the plot near Bayshore, Parrino found her seat and waited. The trees’ survival was up to the board now.
An aging canopy, a growing city
Tampa’s canopy — what some consider a jewel of the city — is not native to the area.
Before World War II, most of Tampa’s landscape was flat, with fewer trees. Just 17% of canopy covered the city, according to Shawn Landry, the director of the Water Institute at the University of South Florida and researcher for Tampa’s Tree Canopy and Urban Forest Analysis, which was released in April. When the area developed, trees were added across the city with little thought about Tampa’s growth, he said.
“None of that’s bad, it’s just that we have to think about, ‘Why do we have to remove a tree for an infrastructure project?’” Landry said. “Because we made a bad decision 50 years ago when we planted trees.”
It’s the legacy of previous decisions the city now confronts, Landry said.
In the mid-1990s, Tampa’s canopy was at its highest. Over the next 16 years, the canopy experienced some periods of growth and others of falloff. But by 2011 it was in steady decline.
The city’s canopy — now at 30% — is at its lowest in 26 years.
The benefits of trees are quantifiable, according to the analysis. Trees cool homes, provide shade on blistering streets and stop stormwater runoff. The study found that areas in Tampa shaded by trees were about 6 degrees cooler than those without trees.
“Healthy trees, particularly large, healthy trees, are the trees that are providing the most benefits and the most canopy,” Landry said.
Tampa’s plan for planting 30,000 trees
Thick wooden stakes propped up a gangly sapling, looking a bit like a baby deer just getting its footing. It will be years before the little oak comes close to the size of its looming elders in the Golfview neighborhood in Tampa.
It is part of the city’s Tree-mendous Tampa program that allows residents to request free trees. The sapling is one of 30,000 that Mayor Jane Castor hopes to see planted by 2030.
After the city announced Tampa’s canopy had dropped again, Castor upped the number of trees residents could request from two to five.
When Sherri Mullis, the coordinator of the tree program, knocked on a homeowner’s door on Lykes Avenue one day earlier this summer, a boy answered, then silently signaled that he’d be back. He returned with his mother, Casey Kuhn, wearing plaid pajamas.
“We’re here for your tree,” Mullis said.
The tree program is financed by Tampa’s Tree Trust. While the fund holds millions, it’s tricky to dole out. When planting a sapling using the fund’s money, it must be planted in the same area where developers took out another tree.
Even without logistical difficulties, physically planting a tree in the ground is not simple.
While the study identified more than 15,000 acres of public and private land where trees could be planted, many of those areas have overhead power lines or underground utilities that would disrupt a growing sapling, Landry said.
City-owned properties are another option and account for more than 685 acres of workable space for tree canopy — about 100 acres short of one Davis Islands.
Private property is where the city can increase the most canopy, said Eric Muecke, the urban forestry manager for Tampa.
“We have to get more aggressive in getting trees to people, to plant trees on their private property where the space is available,” Muecke said.
Kuhn had requested an oak for her property to match the rest of the neighborhood. She called the canopy that lined her street magical. She wanted her own piece of it.
Kuhn’s son asked how long the tree would live. About 150 to 200 years, Mullis said.
“It might outlive us,” she teased.
Maintaining Tampa’s trees and their “sense of place”
Much like in the Golfview area, Tampa’s trees can become etched into the character of a neighborhood.
Canopy-lined streets provide a haven for neighborhood children to climb. Or shade for family picnics and a tire swing. Or housing for birds and their fledglings. These are the benefits that are harder to define, the feelings trees elicit.
“One of the overwhelming things that residents often shared with us was how important trees were for their sense of place in the city of Tampa,” said Rebecca Zarger, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida and researcher for the tree study.
While a majority of Tampa residents who participated in the study said they consider trees extremely important, canopy is unequal across the city. And maintaining what exists can be burdensome for low-income residents.
Uneven canopy across Tampa has meant lower-income and Hispanic neighborhoods don’t benefit from the natural comfort of trees and swelter under growing heat.
Tree maintenance, while necessary to healthy canopy, is costly. Tree removal may be a more appealing option for residents with old trees.
Tree trimming grants, like one provided in East Tampa, can help residents maintain and keep their trees. It’s a benefit Zarger said many residents hoped to see expanded to other areas of the city.
Whit Remer, Tampa’s sustainability and resilience officer, said he believes people understand the core value of trees, but some could have had a sour experience with one particular tree.
“Honestly, an old tree limb could mean — especially in a house that doesn’t have a mortgage anymore and might not have the proper insurance, with a 20-year-old roof — could mean the difference between someone having a house or not if that tree then falls,” Remer said.
A small victory
There are plenty of people with something to say about Tampa’s trees, and there is often a story to go with it.
Parrino’s devotion to trees sprouts from when she first visited Davis Islands and fell in love with the canopy-lined streets. She has lived there since the 1970s, when it was a place to buy a starter home, and she has watched as larger new houses have crowded out older trees.
“We can’t afford to be wasting our grand oaks, our lives depend on it,” she said. “Our health depends on it and the health of our children depend on it.”
On that summer night in June when Parrino appeared before the Tampa board, she felt confident the proposal to remove the grand trees wouldn’t pass, even though she and another tree advocate were the only ones to attend the meeting to oppose their removal.
The board apologized, saying the elm could stay but the grand oak tree could be cut down. The tree had become a casualty of a growing city.
Parrino isn’t giving up. She already has plans for the next board meeting, when the fate of more of Tampa’s grand trees is in question.
