Mr. Bush and his billion trees - President's tree-planting campaign

American Forests, May-June, 1990 by Norah Deakin Davis

Mr. Bush and His Billion Trees

Washington wags are calling President Bush's new tree-planting campaign the "Thousand Points of Shade." Though it trivializes the President's call for greening of America, the appellation is apt. The success of his plan to plant a billion trees a year rests on volunteers, or Points of Light in the Bush lexicon.

The crucial role of volunteers is one of the few certainties about the America the Beautiful plan, for many of the details are still in the making.

Friendly kibitzers might worry, for example, whether the President can reach his 1991 goal of planting four trees for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. And then do it again - plant another billion - every year for "the next several years" or "10 years" (both phrases have been bandied about).

Unfriendly kibitzers scrutinizing the plan might suspect, as one pundit has observed, that there is "less grand design to what goes on inside the White House than most people assume."

But if so, the intention is laudable. No matter how many trees end up planted (the White House is still trying to figure out how to keep an accurate count), our children and grandchildren will thank President George Bush.

The odds are in his favor. When a President of the United States blesses a program with his personal stamp of approval, the federal government tends to snap to and get the job done. No matter how awesome.

Americans have already demonstrated their eagerness to plant trees. As a Forest Service fact sheet on America the Beautiful points out, "Several successful volunteer [tree-planting] efforts by the private sector are already underway, such as [the] American Forestry Association's Global ReLeaf campaign."

To be sure, one White House official told me, there's no point in working out the details until you have all your ducks in a row. Until Congress decides how much to allocate to America the Beautiful, why spend the taxpayer's dollar dotting every i and crossing every t.

Briefly, here is what the White House proposes:

Two-thirds of the $630 million budgeted for America the Beautiful will go to expanding our public lands and protecting our natural resources. The Department of the Interior will administer this piece of the pie.

The Department of Agriculture is to be the lead agency for the other third - the tree part - with a budget of $175 million for 1991. The tree plan will in turn have a rural slice ($110 million) and an urban slice ($30 million) with an additional $35 million for establishing a private foundation.

Acting Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Patricia Kearney will manage day-to-day policy for the relevant Ag agencies. For the rural part, she told me, "private citizens will go to the Soil Conservation Service, Forest Service, and Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service to see what land is eligible."

Much of it will be environmentally sensitive or economically marginal cropland and pasture - acreage included in the Conservation Reserve Program.

For other treeless land, the White House is considering a suggestion by Dallas developer Trammell Crow, named by President Bush as a pioneer in the greening effort, to reforest the borders and median strips of America's highways.

Private landowners who convert to trees may be reimbursed for 50 percent (or up to 75 percent) of the cost of purchasing and planting, though this is one of the t's still to be crossed.

Federal personnel increases will be modest since the existing delivery system - the SCS, ASCS, Forest Service, and state foresters - will be utilized to process applications, distribute cost-sharing funds, and provide technical assistance.

Do we have enough seedlings? The Forest Service insists that state and industry nurseries, along with private firms, are capable of gearing up to meet demand.

Now for the urban slice: In the 1980s, the government's support for the relatively young environmental science of urban forestry averaged $2.5 million a year. The America the Beautiful budget calls for a dramatic expansion.

The federal dollars will go to provide leadership, coordination, promotion, marketing, and technical assistance to help achieve the urban goal of 30 million trees a year. Tony Dorrell, who heads up the Forest Service's role in America the Beautiful, told me, "We won't try to reinvent the wheel. We'll use successful models already going on like the Tree People in Los Angeles."

Dorrell added that the approach will be highly variable. "We'll size up different communities and see where they are right now and whether they need to start from scratch or build from something already going on."

Decisions will not be made in Washington, he insisted. The community "Plant a Tree" initiative will be a partnership with state foresters and local organizations.

National leadership will be shared by the Forest Service and a new private foundation, the National Tree Trust, to be capitalized by one-time appropriation of $35 million (that is, over half of the urban tree slice).

With a blue ribbon board of prominent Americans appointed by Bush, the Tree Trust's job will consist of raising funds from the private sector (corporations and communities), promoting public awareness, and mobilizing individual volunteers, businesses, civic groups, and local governments in America's 40,000 cities and towns. The big bucks are intended to encourage an all-out volunteer contribution of labor and funds to plant street trees on curbsides and lawns and to reforest local parks.