Tacoma, Wash. – University of Puget Sound was honored with a 2020 Tree Campus Higher Education recognition by the Arbor Day Foundation for its commitment to effective urban forest management.
“Tree Campuses and their students set examples for not only their student bodies but the surrounding communities showcasing how trees create a healthier environment,” said Dan Lambe, president of the Arbor Day Foundation. “Because of Puget Sound’s participation, air will be purer, water cleaner, and students and faculty will be surrounded by the shade and beauty trees provide.”
The Tree Campus Higher Education program honors colleges and universities for effective campus forest management and for engaging staff and students in conservation goals. Puget Sound achieved the title by meeting Tree Campus Higher Education’s five standards, which include maintaining a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures for its campus tree program, an Arbor Day observance, and a student service-learning project. Currently there are 403 campuses across the United States with this recognition.
Puget Sound’s 97-acre campus is home to more than 1,500 trees, including towering Douglas firs and other native evergreens, alongside deciduous shade and flowering trees, such as birch, sycamores, dogwoods, and American elms. The trees are a valuable asset, helping to create a welcoming space for campus members, in addition to assisting in keeping the air and water clean by removing harmful pollutants, improving storm water management, and reducing the university’s energy use by cooling on-campus spaces.
The Arbor Day Foundation has helped campuses throughout the country plant thousands of trees, and Tree Campus Higher Education colleges and universities invested more than $51 million in campus forest management last year. This work directly supports the Arbor Day Foundation’s Time for Trees initiative—an unprecedented effort to plant 100 million trees in forests and communities, and to inspire 5 million tree planters by 2022. More information about the program is available at treecampushighered.org.
About the Arbor Day Foundation: The Arbor Day Foundation is a million-member nonprofit conservation and education organization with the mission to inspire people to plant, nurture and celebrate trees. More information is available at arborday.org.
