Urban tree canopy grants totaling $6.8M available to disadvantaged Illinois communities
The Morton Arboretum is accepting grant applications through February 2024 for government organizations in disadvantaged Illinois communities looking to improve their urban tree canopies.
The grants, totaling $6.86 million, are being administered by the Arboretum's Chicago Region Trees Initiative. The program aims to improve the health, diversity and equitable distribution of trees in the Chicago region.
"Communities across the U.S., especially in our area, are dealing with a lot of tough environmental issues such as flooding. Urban heat is another really big issue that a lot of bigger cities especially are starting to feel the impacts of. Trees are one of the tools that we have to help mitigate some of those issues," Zach Wirtz, Chicago Region Trees Initiative's community manager, said.
Provided through Inflation Reduction Act funding to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the grants are part of a $1.5 billion federal investment to boost urban tree cover nationwide. The funding is available to government entities - including municipalities, park districts, counties, townships, forest preserves and Tribal governments - that meet the federal requirements as disadvantaged.
The Arboretum based eligibility on three federally recognized tools, identifying more than 500 Illinois municipalities. Several suburban municipalities are eligible such as Arlington Heights, Aurora and Elgin. A full list can be found at tinyurl.com/IRAMunicipalScreening.
The program consists of two different grants: the Urban and Community Forestry Grant and the Tree Inventory and Management Plan Grant.
The first is available to the full range of government entities in Illinois working in disadvantaged communities. Organizations can apply to receive between $25,000 and $150,000 for projects that increase tree canopy, improve forest health and create or enhance community forestry programs in disadvantaged areas.
If chosen, funded projects must also include the development or enhancement of a tree protection ordinance.
"These ordinances really help communities to set a standard for care both for newly planted trees, and then they also help to ensure that tree canopy is maintained and protected for a long time after any particular grant," Wirtz said. "We see it as a really an investment in those trees."
The second grant, available for Illinois municipalities with more than 75,000 residents, allows communities to apply for up to $3 million to conduct public tree inventories and create urban and community forest management plans based on that inventory.
"There's an old adage that you can't manage what you don't measure," Wirtz said. "This idea of understanding what's on the ground and then creating a plan to really effectively manage it is a great investment for many communities. "
Wirtz added that the amount of funding the federal government set aside for urban tree cover in the Inflation Reduction Act is unprecedented.
"We haven't seen funding in this amount come through before, and we're not sure that it will come back around. We're really excited about this opportunity, and we also want to see success as much as we can," he said. "Our key goal is the success of the projects that we're working on, and we are able to offer quite a lot of assistance to communities who have questions or are interested in the application process to help them through that."
Grant applications and opportunities for application assistance are available at ChicagoRTI.org/grants.
• Jenny Whidden, jwhidden@dailyherald.com is a climate change and environment writer working with the Daily Herald through a partnership with Report For America supported by The Nature Conservancy. To help support her work with a tax-deductible donation, see dailyherald.com/rfa.