Trees matter! They clean our air and water, provide natural stormwater management, drop our temperatures, and even make our streets safer.
Our mission continues on to improve, protect, and sustain the urban canopy of New Orleans by replanting trees, educating the community, and addressing significant environmental challenges through tree plantings and tree giveaways.
Founded in response to massive tree loss from Katrina, the goal has been to replace 100k trees. As we reach near 75K trees, we are already looking towards the next 100K with a focus on the future and main issues that are so prevalent in the Greater New Orleans region.
While our initial mission was to replace the trees from Hurricane Katrina, we have evolved with the needs of our region to also address the overall environmental needs of our community.
Following Hurricane Katrina it was estimated that nearly 200K trees were lost in the greater New Orleans region. Over the years with storms such as Ida, Zeta, Gustav, etc, many look at trees as a potential threat during a storm but what most don’t realize is the significant positive impact a healthy tree can have on their livelihoods, safety, environment, and property value.
Now that we are living in a state of extreme weather patterns leading to draught, extreme heat, storms, etc., trees are one of the immediate ways we can build resilience to these threats on our communities.
Did you know?
A single tree may retain 100 gallons of stormwater or more!
(Arbor Day Foundation)
“People can go back and forth and fight all they want about climate change, or fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry and the big bad guy. While all that is going on, what can you do right now to have a positive impact on climate change? Plant a tree.”
(ABC NEWS)
2019
These maps were provided by Dr. Christopher Potter of CASA Systems 2100 (casa2100.com) and show our New Orleans tree canopy cover as of 2019 (left) and 2017 (right).