Grant money funds green growth for Oshkosh urban locales

Everybody loves a walk in the park.To support its urban forests, the City of Oshkosh will receive a $25,000 regular Urban Forestry Program Grant in 2025, the Wisconsin DNR announced in December. The state-funded grant is available to Wisconsin municipalities, nonprofits, and tribal governments, and Oshkosh joins 43 grantees in receiving funding through the program this year. Through the regular grant program, recipients must make an initial investment of $2,000 to $50,000 in an urban forestry project, but then can have 50 percent of that cost reimbursed once their project has been completed. 

The city’s first priority in allocating the grant funds will be hiring a consultant to advise the development of a strategic urban forestry plan. This plan will help the city identify its long-term forestry goals and prepare to meet the needs of the community before demands for support arise. Travis Derks, the Landscape Operations Manager for the Oshkosh Parks Department, has a front row seat to the progression and looks forward to a more intentional approach.  

“Right now, we’re fairly reactionary, where something happens and we react to it as opposed to being proactive where we can see ahead and plan for it,” he said. 

Derks knows that this reactionary approach is especially evident in the city’s management of new tree plantings, which will become more coordinated with a strategic plan. 

“Right now, we take requests for terrace trees, and there are also certain areas that we try and focus on, but there’s no map of, ‘All right, this year we are going to plant in this neighborhood, next year we are planting in this neighborhood,’” he said. “It’s not necessarily a mad scramble, but it’s kind of a, ‘Where are we going to put these?’ for how we’re going to plant them.”

According to Olivia Witthun, the Wisconsin DNR’s Urban Forestry Coordinator for the state’s East Central region, the DNR was particularly excited to award the grant to Oshkosh because of the city’s intention to create a strategic forestry plan.

“That’s the most important thing, really,” she said. “You need to know what you have, so do an inventory, and then create the plan so you know what your priorities are and where you need to start and focus.” 

Urban forestry provides communities with a variety of benefits, which Dr. Shannon Davis-Foust, a professor of biology and environmental studies at UW-Oshkosh and president of the Fox Valley chapter of Wild Ones, acknowledges. Increasing the number of trees in an environment has an especially positive ecological effect.

“The trees themselves are providing that microclimate, making it cooler in urban areas or anywhere you’ve got more trees, but then you also have those trees storing the extra carbon to help make the climate more stable, so it’s a win-win,” she said. “And then, it’s a win-win-win because you have more habitat when you have more trees, and more places for insects and birds and the whole ecosystem.”

Witthun notes that the environmental benefits of urban forestry support communities in a variety of ways, including creating jobs, mitigating the impact of weather events, and promoting the health of residents.

“Trees are just big air filters. They’re taking that particulate matter out of the air and just holding onto it on their leaves so that you’re not breathing it in,” she said. “The shade lessens issues of skin cancer if you have those over your playgrounds and things like that, so you’re not out in the sun all of the day.”

Junior Jacob Schaefer notices that his mental health and productivity improve when he is able to spend time around trees and wildlife.

“I like being in nature, I like hiking, I’m around trees a lot,” he said. “It improves my mood, so if I’m in a better mood it’s easier to do homework and stuff like that.”

Davis-Foust affirms that spending time in nature supports individuals’ mental well-being.

“We have definitely found evidence of psychoactive compounds in trees and plants and soil bacteria, all sorts of different sources in nature, that can help our mental health,” she said. “Doctors can actually prescribe forest bathing in some countries.”

A major component of the city’s strategic planning will be identifying which neighborhoods tree planting should be prioritized in. Witthun is ready to dedicate the time to produce the best strategy.

“Oshkosh in particular is looking at analyzing the canopy that they have and doing it through a bit of an environmental justice and climate and economic justice focus, so they can hone in plantings on areas just to be equal in what they’re doing, where they’re planting, and why,” she said. “That’s another reason that we really liked what they were doing.”

Also important will be determining which species of trees the city will select for future planting projects. The DNR works to ensure that communities are diversifying their tree populations, and will choose not to award grants to applicants if their proposed urban forests project will create too homogenous a canopy.

“We don’t want to set people up for failure, which is what happens when they have, let’s just say, 20 percent ash trees in their community and an emerald ash borer comes through,” Witthun said. “Suddenly, out of the 10,000 trees they have, they need to get rid of 2,000 in a matter of years and it overwhelms them.”

Davis-Foust knows that planting native species is also critical when communities seek to provide the most benefits for residents and create habitats for other species.

“When it comes to native plants, most of them are perennials, so they’re much bigger, they store a lot more carbon, and they’re cleaning the water because they’re taking up nutrients before they get into the waterways,” she said.

Although diversification and native planting are important to fostering healthy urban ecosystems, Derks acknowledges that the unique pressures of a city environment create a much broader range of criteria for city landscapers to consider.

“There’s about 25, probably more, street trees that I go through,” he said. “We determine those through salt tolerance, height, fall color, flowering, and fruit. In the street, a lot of people find those trees fruitless, just so we’re not clogging up the sewer system with all the fruit and they’re not making a mess on the sidewalk and on the streets.”

Although the DNR’s urban forestry grant is only available to governing bodies and nonprofits, Witthun believes that the program will be most successful if these groups work alongside residents and businesses to put trees on private property.

“When you look at the canopy as a whole, there’s only a little percentage of that that is actually impacted and owned publicly,” she said. “So most of it is privately held, and in order to impact and increase that canopy, we need to work with those private property owners, so the grant is a vehicle to do that.”

As a recipient of the urban forestry grant in 2023 and 2024, Oshkosh allocated funds to distributing trees to private landowners in an effort to replace canopy in areas affected by emerald ash borer. Individuals can also take independent action to care for their area’s urban forestry.

“Plant trees, and take care of the trees that you have,” Witthun said. “Trees are so straightforward and easy once you know a couple little things.”

Derks invites Oshkosh residents passionate about this issue to consider serving on the city’s Advisory Parks Board or Sustainability Board, and hopes that the community will have more opportunities for hands-on involvement in the future.

“There aren’t a whole lot of good projects that we have because it’s all manual labor,” he said. “We’re getting into a better volunteer system now as we’re coming up with some projects, but we’re not quite there yet.”

by Aria Boehler

Published February 3rd, 2025

Oshkosh West Index Volume 121 Issue IV