Washington Urban Forestry Program Faces 'Existential' Budget Cut

Proposed budget cuts in the Washington state legislature would effectively kill the state’s urban forestry program, advocates warn. 

According to an article in The Urbanist by Ryan Packer, “The Washington State Urban and Community Forestry (UCF) Program provides technical assistance to local governments, tribes, and nonprofits across the state when it comes to work to plant and sustain trees and other vegetation, and directly provides grant funding for them to advance that work.” 

Now, a proposed supplemental budget zeroes out funding for the program, Packer writes. “Not only would the elimination of DNR’s program make it much harder for these communities to access federal tree funding in the future, zeroing out the program right now could require those local partners to pay back any funds tied to work that isn’t able to be wrapped up by the time the state budget takes effect on July 1.”

The program’s $3 million in funding is a small part of the state’s $79.2 billion total budget, Packer adds. “But those dollars pay large dividends across the state and almost certainly bring in more dollars from outside the state than what it costs to administer.”