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October 2017
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2017 Save The Elms Program (STEP) Wrap-Up
October 17, 2017
On
a cool, sunny morning in late September, members of our team of volunteer
Citizen Scientists, SacTree’s staff, and the City of Sacramento’s staff gathered
for delicious brunch under the oaks and elms in Land Park to celebrate another
successful year of our Save
The Elms Program (STEP). It had been exactly a year since we
last met for the purpose of discussing the overall impact of our team’s efforts
to monitor Sacramento’s public American and English elms for the pervasive
Dutch elm disease (DED), a fungal disease with no known cure which has ravaged
our city’s elms since the 1990’s. As our monitoring season wasnearing
its end, everyone was anxious to find out how we did this time around.
Colleen Cadawaller, our Deputy Director,
and Torin Dunnavant, our Director of Education & Engagement, started us off
by once again thanking our STEP Citizen Scientists for their continued
commitment to saving Sacramento’s elms, some of the city’s largest and most
iconic trees. Their task – to adopt at least 5-10 public American and English
elms and monitor them for the symptoms of DED at least 3 times during the
summer, reporting any they find through our Greenprint
Maps application – was not an easy one. Our STEP
Citizen Scientists not only had to correctly identify the symptoms of DED, but
distinguish them from symptoms of other issues that affect elms that look
similar, such as squirrel damage, broken branches, and damage from elm leaf
beetles. Each STEP Citizen Scientist was required to attend a training led by
SacTree’s certified arborists to learn how to do so.
“Our goal for 2017 was to train 100 STEP
Citizen Scientists to monitor 1,100 of Sacramento’s public elms for DED, about
half of the total population,” explained Colleen. “We’re excited to report that
we actually trained 101 STEP Citizen Scientists to monitor 1,500 public elms
for DED in 2017, about 65% of the total population. Approximately 100 elms were
ultimately reported as having DED-like symptoms through Greenprint Maps, and 14
of these elmswere eventually confirmed as having DED
through testing by the State’s pathology lab and subsequently removed by the
City’s arborists.” Left unchecked, DED transmitted through the elm bark beetle
can spread quite rapidly to neighboring elms through root grafting (i.e.,
connected roots), so this news was a relief to our team. The only way to slow
the spread of DED is remove the elms around the City that have it. Without our
STEP Citizen Scientists identifying diseased elms early, many more would die
from the disease.
Kevin
Hocker, the City of Sacramento’s arborist, was in attendance to provide more
information about the program’s impact before answering our STEP Citizen
Scientists’ many questions about elms, DED, and the City’s tree ordinances. “In
2016, the City’s Urban Forestry Department removed over 80 elms, and about half
of those removals were due to DED. This year, we removed a total of 66 elms,
and only 33 were confirmed as having DED,” Kevin happily announced. “So, I feel
confident making the following prediction: we will see the spread of DED slow
even further in 2018, perhaps only removing 14-16 diseased elms.” Our team was
thrilled to have this concrete evidence that STEP was meeting – and exceeding –
its intended results.
After
an extended Q&A with Kevin, we had an opportunity for our STEP Citizen
Scientists to share their feedback about the program with SacTree’s staff. Some
of the suggested improvements we heard were: find ways for STEP Citizen Scientists to interact with each
other further more (possibly through Facebook or a chat room), add
multi-colored tree markers to Greenprint Maps to indicate which elms need to be
monitored or have been monitored, continue offering the Saturday morning
“walkabouts” to STEP Citizen Scientists for additional training, and provide
opportunities for STEP Citizen Scientists to see elms with DED up close before
they’re removed. Throughout the conversation, SacTree’s staff took scrupulous notes,
assuring everyone they would do their best to implement whichever changes they
could next year.
The winners of our contests for STEP Citizen
Scientists were also announced. Tracy Bieberly and DD Cathcart were awarded our
coveted Most Elms Monitored Awards as each of them single-handedly monitored
over 100 elms downtown. Kelly McDole’s adopted elm “Elmira Hass-Greenleaves”
and Athol Wong’s adopted elm “Woodstock” won our Best Tree Nickname Awards for
their obvious cleverness. Jennifer Stuck and Tracy Bieberly won our Best
Photograph Awards for their submissions, “Eye of the Tiger” (Jennifer) and “RIP
Ziggy” (Tracy), too. Each winner received a $25 gift card to a location of
their choosing.
Ray Tretheway, our Executive Director,
concluded our brunch by once again emphasizing the importance of STEP: “This
year, wediscovered 14 elms with DED. That may
not sound like much. But, because many of these elms are planted near a dozen
or more other elms, and because DED spreads so quickly, your efforts are
directly responsible for saving two, three, four, or even five times that many
elms. We cannot thank you, our STEP Citizen Scientists, enough for preserving Sacramento’s
remaining elms for as long as possible.”
Optimistic about the future of Sacramento’s
elms and full of donuts, coffee, and breakfast pizza, many of our STEP Citizen
Scientists left excited at the prospect of contributing to the program again
next year. For those that weren’t available to participate in the celebration,
we sincerely hope you’ll consider joining us again in 2018 too! Our goals for
2018 will certainly be even bigger and bolder.
Want
to stay updated on our Save The Elms Program or volunteer as a STEP Citizen
Scientist in 2018? Sign up for our program-specific
newsletter here.