March 22, 2016
Contact: Nancy Lee Gomer, Marketing Coordinator, 636-949-7535, ngomer@sccmo.org
St. Charles County, Missouri – The St. Charles County Parks and Recreation Department invites citizens, land managers, land owners, and other resource professionals to attend a free educational tree program at noon on April 16 at Broemmelsiek Park, located at 1795 Highway DD in Defiance. The program is especially beneficial to homeowners and will give them the tools and knowledge they need to manage and improve their own “urban forests.”
St. Charles County Parks Natural Resource Supervisor, Tony Peper, will lead a short presentation at the Broemmelsiek Visitors Center to discuss the environmental benefits different species of trees provide landowners, followed by an educational hike. Peper will explain the parks department’s new tree structure model, which estimates the service and value of park trees, species, tree value, size and location. He will also use the same data to teach citizens about the benefits provided by the trees in our own community forests.
“This informative park tree program allows the public to learn how they can quantify the structure of trees in the community and the environmental services they provide,” said St. Charles County Parks and Recreation Director Bettie Yahn-Kramer. “The extensive tree knowledge and informative data was gained through a $25,000 grant awarded to the parks department by the Missouri Department of Conservation.”
The park tree program is part of a $25,000 Tree Resource Improvement and Maintenance (TRIM) Grant that was awarded to the parks department by the Missouri Department of Conservation. The grant allowed the parks department to take an inventory of the forests within the 3,174 acres of St. Charles County parkland and turn the data into tangible information for public use.
Prior to the tree program presentation at Broemmelsiek Park on April 16, Peper will be talking to park guests about the TRIM Grant and tree benefits from 9 a.m. to noon at the department’s Earth Day event at the park. The Earth Day event is also a free community event that features crafts, guided hikes, planting tips, free electronic recycling and more!
For more information about assessing the tree population in your community, visit i-Tree at www.itreetools.org, a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the USDA Forest Service that provides urban forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools. The i-Tree Tools help communities of all sizes to strengthen their urban forest management and advocacy efforts by quantifying the structure of community trees and the environmental services that trees provide.
For more information about the free educational tree program, contact the St. Charles County Parks and Recreation Department at 636.949.7535.
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