City receives grant to replace trees lost in ice storm

Trees are a pretty big part of Fayetteville, to say the least. So when we lost about 3200 of them to a gigantic ice storm earlier this year, a lot of folks started worrying.

Fortunately, once the leaves returned, the look of our landscape wasn’t as bad as we anticipated.

But the need to replace those lost trees hasn’t gone unnoticed.

According to a release issued last week, The City of Fayetteville has been awarded a grant valued at approximately $81,000 from the Arkansas Forestry Commission to assess tree damage and to replace trees lost in January’s storm.

The city’s Urban Forestry Division of the Parks and Recreation Department was awarded the funding from the Arkansas Forestry Commission through the United States Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Forest Service.

About $20,000 will be used to conduct an inventory damage assessment of 90 miles of right-of-way in three parks and to collect data on an estimated 2,500 street trees. The data collected will supply a sample of tree conditions and provide valuable information on managing trees damaged by the ice storm. Identifying hazardous trees that need further pruning or removal is a top priority, according to city staff.

Approximately $61,000 will be used to plant about 230 trees along streets and in parks damaged by the ice storm.