While perusing news releases recently, one on trees caught my eye. I contacted Leslie Berckes, program development and innovation director for Trees Forever. She provided some information and city-by-city comparisons on tree canopy, which she described this way: “Imagine you’re a bird flying over each city. As you look down, you’d see big and small trees in parks, along streets, in people’s yards. Each of these trees creates a canopy.”

Here’s the percentage of Greater Des Moines core cities covered by trees: 
Ankeny…………. 9 percent.
Clive……………. 23 percent.
Des Moines….. 29 percent.
Johnston……… 19 percent.
Urbandale……. 18 percent.
Waukee……….. 10 percent.
West Des Moines…. 23 percent.
Windsor Heights…… 31 percent.

Berckes explained that Trees Forever and partners at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Forestry Division want to encourage communities to increase their tree canopy by 3 percent over the next 30 years. “To give you an example, that would mean that the city of Des Moines and area citizens need to plant 2,000 to 3,000 trees per year to reach this goal,” she said.

Why should business leaders care? Trees can increase a city’s appeal, and that could be useful when we’re looking at a statewide unemployment rate of 2.5 percent and need any edge we can get on getting skilled and talented workers to Iowa.

Data on tree canopy came from the Iowa DNR Forestry Division.