Starting this year and continuing through 2024, SDOT will significantly improve the health and safety of Seattle’s street trees.
Our Urban Forestry staff will have better information on the City’s street trees using a new street tree app and more staff dedicated to proactively prune and replace trees, thanks to increased funding from the Move Seattle Levy.
SDOT’s Tree Collection app
SDOT is responsible for more than 40,000 city street trees and oversees approximately 250,000 street trees maintained by adjacent property owners. Using our efficient street tree app and lots of help from volunteers and interns, SDOT is striving to update the inventory of all street trees in the City over the nine years of the Move Seattle Levy. This vital knowledge will help us make better decisions on managing our urban forest.
The addition of new urban forestry crew members will allow us to continue to respond to urgent needs and requests, while increasing our level of proactive maintenance. Over the nine years of the Levy, we will prune every street tree—many of them more than once!
An Urban Forestry crew member taking care of a city street tree.
We will improve our ability to increase forest diversity, plant the right trees in the right place, where they provide the most benefit. We will even be able to track how we distribute our resources so the benefits of our street trees are more equitable throughout all Seattle neighborhoods.
All these improvements will increase the health of our trees, the safety of our streets and the shared benefits of the urban forest along Seattle’s streets.