AWA Tree Consultants at the National Tree Officers Conference

National Tree Officers Conference

The team at AWA Tree Consultants recently attended the 3rd annual National Tree Officers Conference. Organised by the London Tree Officers Organisation, Municipal Tree Officers Association and the Institute of Chartered Foresters, the event took place at Telford’s Oakengates Theatre. AWA Arboriculturist Patrick Rowntree discusses a few of the talks and issues that he personally found most interesting from the day…

It was a well-organised and smoothly-run event that was well worth attending; however, the diverse range of topics meant some issues covered were more relevant than others to my own specific work and interests. The day’s talks were broken down into 4 sessions; International Diversity & Professionalism, Legislation & Protection, Opportunities & Biosecurity and Data Utilisation.

Session 1 was chaired by ICF Executive Director Shireen Chambers, who introduced the room to Lars Schultz-Christensen of Copenhagen, Denmark. Consigned with the duty of monitoring the street trees of Copenhagen, Lars demonstrated how developments in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in the last two decades have helped him oversee advances in the health and vigour of his municipality’s urban forest. It was largely the productivity afforded by this technology that allowed him and his team to bring about these changes. No longer restrained by pen and paper, their time was freed up to systematically maintain, irrigate and monitor the trees. The results were plain to see; a 22% reduction in lost trees since the introduction of GIS, and roughly a 70% average growth increase in the trees’ first 5 years!

The second session got under way with talks from Andrew McCutcheon and Andrew Igoea both fulfilling the equivalent role of Tree Officer for their respective islands, Guernsey and Ilse of Man. The talks covered relevant legislation in their countries and how attendees might learn from it. An interesting point to arise from this talk was from Igoea, who explained how every tree in the country over 8cm in stem diameter was protected by statutory legislation. Perhaps not entirely practicable on a larger scale such as in the U.K, but an interesting concept nonetheless!

After lunch, a thought-provoking oration on why tree professionals need to engage more with engineers was given.Russell Horsey, MICFor, gave an excellent talk about his time at Bristol City Council and what he learned from it. The crux of this talk revolved around what tree officers could do to aid their cause; and the need to speak the language of engineers. Rather than wearying and alienating our counterparts in other industries with tree-talk, he suggested establishing a mutually-beneficial relationship by approaching the topic of trees from an engineer’s perspective. One such example included an agreement to have a multitude of trees planted on a new road. Russell achieved this by using facts, figures and statistics – the type of language engineers appreciate – to demonstrate how trees helped reduce collisions by slowing traffic, making drivers more acutely aware of the centre of the road and by putting greater distances between cars.

Many other stimulating talks were given throughout the day, which helped keep us, as private sector arboricultural consultants, informed on the latest practices in the world of the tree officer and local authority tree management. Although the event is primarily aimed at tree officers, the delegates list revealed we weren’t the only private sector tree consultants who attended. Tree officers undertake challenging and vital work and an event like this helped me appreciate how we are all ultimately battling for the same thing – a sustainable urban forest.