Clinton Tree Board expands efforts to protect urban forest
From planting 50 trees to protecting other trees from beetles, the work of the Clinton Tree Board continues.
Riley Sain, chairman of the Tree Board, spoke to the City Council recently offering an update.
“I can see the need for it in our city and I really appreciate his spirit of trying to get us up to date on keeping our trees healthy and in place; they’re a benefit to everybody,” Vice Mayor Larry Gann who has also served on the Tree Board said regarding its work.
Sain said the board got an $83,000 grant through the city, and $65,000 of that went to cleaning up dead limbs from trees at Jaycee Park.
He said this would not only prevent the limbs from falling on people, but also make the trees healthier.
Sain said he and others had begun working on dealing with a beetle that is often a pest to trees —the emerald ash borer — before the tree board even existed in its current form.
“If you’ve driven down the interstate in the last few years and you’ve seen all the dead trees along the side, those are mostly white ash trees,” he said.
He said Jaycee Park had about 40 of these trees, but volunteers have treated them.
“We’ve been treating those for about eight or nine years now, and we’ve still got 26 of them that are alive, which is phenomenal,” Sain said.
“Every time we have somebody come to look, they can’t believe those ash trees are still alive,” he said.
Sain said that over the past three years, the Tree Board got Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement grants totaling $6,549, which led to planting 50 trees in 2022 and 2023. They’re at Jaycee Park now.
Jain described them as two inches in diameter.
He said volunteers including Clinton High School students planted them. These were matching grants, meaning the city needed to provide at least some funding for the relevant projects to get them.
He said this year’s grant of $807 will lead to even more trees for Clinton’s parks.
Sain said the Tree Board traces itself back to students in his Environmental Science Class at Clinton High School asking why Clinton wasn’t a Tree City, leading to the Tree Board’s creation. He’s since retired from teaching, but remains active on the board.
Having a tree board is one requirement for that designation from the Arbor Day Foundation, along with a public tree-care ordinance, an at least $2 per capita budget for “urban forestry,” and an annual Arbor Day celebration.
In 2024, that celebration involved South Clinton Elementary School students planting a tree at South Clinton Park.
Sain said the state of Tennessee is encouraging the Tree Board to develop an urban forest management plan because the state gets more money from the federal government if more cities have these plans.
“In the long run. it’ll make for a happier, healthier forest, and one that is cheaper to maintain,” Sain said.
