L.A. sets goal to plant 1 million saplings

LOS ANGELES -- Watch out, Sacramento, City of Trees.

The City of Angels is making a run at your reputation -- and your claim to fame is already in doubt.

Los Angeles may be more renowned for its sprawl, smog and celebrities than its trees.

But it could challenge Sacramento's tree-loving status with a "Million Trees L.A." tree-planting campaign its mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, plans to officially launch Sept. 30.

"If you add a million trees to Los Angeles … it could begin to give the City of Trees a run for its money," said Greg McPherson, U.S. Forest Service Center for Urban Forest Research director.

Sacramento tree boosters beg to differ.

"We will stay one good shade tree ahead of them," promised Ray Tretheway, Sacramento Tree Foundation executive director and city councilman.

He said the Sacramento region is launching its own drive to plant 4 million trees in Sacramento and five surrounding counties over the next 40 years.

But Sacramento may need millions more to hang onto its claim of being one of the world's greatest tree cities.

For decades, civic boosters bragged that Sacramento was second only to Paris in the number of trees per person -- a boast it now appears had little basis in fact.

A U.S. Forest survey shows Sacramento doesn't even rank in the top five cities in trees per capita.

The survey of 21 cities that have conducted tree counts since 1989 found Sacramento rated No. 8 in trees per capita, behind municipalities in New Jersey, West Virginia, Canada, New York and Georgia.

Dave Nowak, the Forest Service project leader who compiled the information, said the top cities had forests within their boundaries or were located in forestland where trees sprout easily.

Sacramento, on what was once prairie land, can still lay claim to California bragging rights -- but just barely.

With 4.3 trees per person, the City of Trees edged out Oakland, the only other California city on the list. Oakland was No. 10 with four trees per person.

Sacramento tree boosters can also take heart in Los Angeles' standing. The Southern California metropolis didn't even make the list because it hasn't compiled the necessary data.

But current estimates put it at less than one tree per person.

Tretheway said the long-held belief that Sacramento was second only to Paris may have started with a 1958 newspaper story making that claim.

But he said the story reported only on publicly owned trees, leaving all privately owned trees out of the census. So the claim was dubious -- even in 1958.

"It's quite the urban myth," Tretheway said.

In the last 30 years, he said, cities around the country have launched tree-planting campaigns, similar to Sacramento's, as their leaders realized the benefits. Trees can help clean the air and water, lower energy consumption and create a more livable community.

In Los Angeles, the nonprofit organization TreePeople is among the oldest tree-planting organizations, and it had its own million-tree drive 25 years ago.

Beginning in 1981, it set out to spruce up the city before the opening of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. TreePeople recorded the planting of the 1 millionth tree -- an apricot in Canoga Park -- four days before decathlete Rafer Johnson lit the Olympic torch at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The city's new million-tree campaign has not set a deadline, and Los Angeles Board of Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels said planting that many saplings could take "several years."

She said the goal is to increase the city's canopy -- a measure of what percentage of the city has tree coverage -- from 18 percent to the national average of 27 percent.

"I have encountered a lot of enthusiasm for this project," Daniels said.

The campaign has already recorded the planting of 33,306 trees. But the city's signature trees -- the majestic palms -- don't count.

That's because palms are more closely related to grasses than trees, and don't provide the shade or other benefits of leafier specimens.

Five nonprofit agencies have promised to plant 875,000 of the 1 million leafier trees that do count, and they're already at work on meeting those goals.

On a recent Friday, one of those organizations, North East Trees, sent its crew of 12 "at-risk" teens and three supervisors to plant 20 firewheel trees in a low-income Los Angeles neighborhood.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power paid for the saplings as part of a shade tree program aimed at reducing energy demand.

North East Trees provided the training for the teens, and the young crew supplied the muscle.

The crew hauled the 6- to 7-foot trees from a flatbed truck, then sweated and strained to dig the holes for planting the firewheels along Manitou Avenue.

The crew stuck the saplings in the hole, packed dirt and mulch around them and gave the trees their first drink of water in their new home.

"I talk to the tree, telling it that it's in shock now, but it will be all right," said 16-year-old Mayra Rodriguez.

Five years from now, she said, she hopes to return to Manitou Avenue and find beautiful grown trees lining the aging thoroughfare.

Aaron Thomas, North East Trees training director and field arborist, said planting trees along blighted streets can "transform an entire area."

Over the last 15 years, he said, North East Trees has planted more than 300,000 saplings in northeast Los Angeles, creating cooler and more livable streets in some of the city's oldest and poorest neighborhoods.

"Trees are legacies," Thomas said. "They live much longer than we do."

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Top 10 tree cities

1. Moorestown, N.J.

2. Morgantown, W.Va.

3. Atlanta

4. Calgary, Alberta

5. Woodbridge, N.J.

6. Syracuse, N.Y.

7. Freehold, N.J.

8. Sacramento

9. Baltimore

10. Oakland

About the writer:

• The Bee's Laura Mecoy can be reached at (310) 546-5860 or lmecoy@sacbee.com.