2017: Making Strides in Creating a Climate-Ready LA

January 9, 2018

Happy New Year!

From the TreePeople family to yours, we hope you had a wonderful holiday season and New Years! We are starting off 2018 with a tremendous feeling of gratitude due to all of the milestones we reached last year– all which not have been possible if it wasn’t for people like you!

Let’s take a look back at some of the top 2017 highlights:

PROTECTING AND RESTORING LA’s URBAN FOREST

Our Forestry Department and their amazing volunteers were busy bees in 2017! We had a robust planting season due to the tremendous amount of rain we’ve seen in 6 years. This made a dent in the dying tree epidemic.

  • 4,700+ volunteers joined us in 2017 (that’s 1,000 more volunteers than last year!).
  • 1,981 new trees were planted across LA county.
  • 9,500+ trees and native plants were cared for by our terrific volunteers and staff.
  • 216,000 gallons of stormwater was captured by our in-park cistern (totally filled by February!)
  • We began work on two major community greening initiatives – one in the Northeast San Fernando Valley and one in South LA.

GENEROUS DONATIONS

All this important work in the field could not have been done without help from our amazing supporters. Wow did they really step up to the challenge in 2017– we had:

  • 1,300+ people become new TreePeople members just last year!
  • $66,000 raised at the 15th annual season of Once Upon a Canyon Night— our best year to date!
  • Our generous donors raised the most money to date at our annual gala, An Evening Under the Harvest Moon!
  • 826 people stepped up and joined the Fight for Trees Matching Challenge donating a total of $169,150.
  • Thank you to The Boeing Company, The Walt Disney Company and other business partners for their generous contributions!

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Our children are our future and the next generation of climate fighters. Thanks to our Environmental Education Department, teachers, principals, parents and community groups we continued the valuable work of spreading environmental literacy across LA County last year.

  • 236,000+ LA County students were impacted by our school outreach projects!
  • 10,000 students discovered the wonders of nature in our Park while on our Eco-Tours!
  • 147 Eco Clubs brought environmental sustainability to their campuses across the county.
  • We continued the valuable work on the task force with Ten Strands and the creation of the Blueprint for Environmental Literacy.

POLICY & RESEARCH

Our Policy Department made strides in 2017 to protect LA’s trees and people. Valuable research was conducted on the effects of extreme heat in Los Angeles and the State passed bills we supported to expand the protection of our urban forests.

  • $320,000 grant was awarded by the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council to the Los Angeles Urban Cooling Collaborative (LAUCC), a national partnership led by TreePeople, to tackle the growing problem of urban heat.
  • Three measures to expand protections and provide much-needed resources were passed by the legislature and officially signed by Governor Brown in October.
    • Assembly Bill 1530 expands the State’s Urban Forestry Act to directly connect urban forestry to stormwater management, social justice, climate-readiness, job creation and more.
    • Assembly Bill 109 received $20 million for its Urban and Community Forestry Program. This is the largest single-state, one-year allocation of funding for urban forestry in U.S. history!
    • SB 5 contains no less than $15 million for urban forestry, $100 million for stormwater projects across the state and millions more for river parkways, urban streams, and other conservation programs.

With so many exciting things that happened in 2017, we cannot wait to see what this new year will bring.

Join us to make 2018 count and protect LA’s trees and people against extreme heat, wildfires and other climate catastrophes– become a member or renew your membership today!

By Caitlin Dunham

After graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a degree in Forestry and Natural Resource Management, Caitlin discovered a passion for working in social media and marketing and eventually found her way to TreePeople. With her unique forestry and marketing background, Caitlin is now growing and thriving within TreePeople’s Yurt Village. She loves that she can bridge the gap between science and marketing and is at the frontlines of educating Angelenos on trees and how they can save LA.