'Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, and climb black branches up a snow-white trunk. Toward heaven...' – Robert Frost.
Macomb, Illinois, which is recognized as a Tree City USA by the Arbor Day Foundation, prides itself on the thousands of trees growing throughout the community, as well as the management of the trees that fall under the purview of the city. Besides being recognized as a Tree City, Macomb has also received a Growth Award from the foundation for demonstrating the city's dedication to planting, growing and maintaining trees. To be named a Tree City, a community or organization must maintain a tree board (Tree Board members, appointed to three-year terms by the mayor, can be found at (cityofmacomb.com/ boards-and-commissions), have a tree care ordinance in place, dedicate an annual forestry budget and host an Arbor Day event.
Macomb is unique for a community its size to have a full-time urban forester as part of the city's roster. Skip Bowles has served as the City of Macomb's urban forester since 2017. In that role, he's responsible for maintaining the health and vitality of the city's 6,000-plus tree inventory, which includes the pruning and care, cutting down when necessary, watering, planting new trees, treating for disease and insects, assessing tree health and more along the city's many rights-of-way, boulevards, medians, city parks and other city-owned spaces and properties.
'While we'll remove trees on city property, if a homeowner has a tree that falls on a sidewalk or the street, anything that goes from the curb into the street, we'll certainly take care of that part of the clean-up to ensure that vehicular traffic and pedestrians can get through without issues,' he said. 'The city's responsibility is the removal of, care of, pruning and replanting of trees on public, and city-owned property, which would include trees and large limbs that fall out of private yards onto the public sidewalk and streets.'
While the city has no jurisdiction over trees on private property, and their removal (or the planting of new trees), what Bowles and his co-workers can do is work with homeowners to determine the health of a tree and provide sound guidance, such as with the Emerald Ash Borer 'invasion.' Bowles noted that Macomb was 'incredibly lucky,' unlike some communities, such as those in the Chicago suburb which lost thousands of trees, some close to 70 percent of their trees, due to the ash borer. Bowles and his team took down nearly close to 400 Ash trees on city property over a four-year timespan, and when that task was done, he sent letters to homeowners who had Ash trees on their property to provide information on mitigation. Unfortunately, the only way to get rid of the invasive, destructive species is to cut down a tree, or to do chemical injections, which must be done every three years, he added.
