Home  »  Programs  »  Save the Elms   »  

About Save The Elms Program

The majestic American and English elm trees are the dominant, most historical and visible of Sacramento's trees. Elms represent a remarkable legacy spanning generations; many of our elms are over 100 years old and climb as high as 130 feet into the city sky line.

But they've been in trouble for a while. Dutch elm disease (DED), a fungal disease with no known cure, has been plaguing these elms since the 1990s. The disease continues to ravage our elm population, a problem only exasperated by the current five-year drought.

Replacing this elm canopy and the rich and varied benefits provided to our community simply is not possible. For this reason taking every possible action to increase their health and longevity is worthwhile and, in some ways, a responsibility that spans arboricultural, urban forest and societal values.

The Sacramento Tree Foundation believes our elm canopy is critical to Sacramento’s urban forest history and community priorities. We are working with the City of Sacramento to develop a corps of volunteer citizen scientists to monitor the remaining public elm trees in order to slow the spread of DED.

Over the next three summers, in partnership with the City of Sacramento, we will

• Recruit, train, recognize, and retain a volunteer force that will monitor Sacramento’s public elm trees three times each summer.
• Work with an Expert Task Force to ensure efforts are science based, locally appropriate, and measurable.
• Provide monitoring data in real time to City of Sacramento staff for immediate follow up on trees noted with potential DED symptoms.
• Collect and share the results of monitoring efforts.
• Celebrate and evaluate successes in October.

The purple dots on this map of downtown Sacramento mark our American and English elms. Parks spaces are represented in green.