Trump Cuts Will Affect Tree Canopy Restoration Work in Cuyahoga County

Cleveland’s new Division of Forestry could help repair the depleted tree canopy across the city. Credit: Mark Oprea

A sweet kind of optimism carried Julie Gierke into growing the Heights Tree People nonprofit she joined in 2022.

The group, founded in 2019 by Cleveland Heights resident and green thumb Bill Hanavan, had flourished on a primarily volunteer effort, planting oaks or elms on tree lawns off Lee Road or assembling a mini forest near the Coventry PEACE Campus.

Roughly 1,400 trees had been rooted in about five years, all thanks to sympathetic donors and money from state forestry programs. (All green thumbs work gratis.)

Which is why Gierke, the director of the program, was anxious come February 18. President Trump had submitted an executive action ordering the defunding of any federal initiative backing anything at all related to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

HTP was at risk. A little over $18,000 was alloted this year by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to help buy trees—some 100 per season—to go up in neighbors’ yards. Costing them nothing.

Like arts organizations, urban clinics, or National Parks, the funds that would’ve gone to Gierke and her tree planters was effectively frozen.

“Without that funding it would be difficult to continue planting trees free of charge,” she told Scene, “which is the basis of our mission.”

“Trees should not be a partisan issue,” Gierke added.

What’s been framed by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency as a high-octane effort to curtail excess spending of federal dollars has been seen by others, specifically those that work or live in the sectors rife with cuts, as unchecked overstepping.

And now it’s trees.

In a region that’s found it needs to plant tens of thousands of new trunks per year to fully restore its fledgling canopy, a stoppage of money trickling down from the state for saplings or for keeping old trunks healthy doesn’t spell good news.

In that freezing of $5.5 million from ODNR’s annual Inflationa Reduction Act grants, roughly $1 million of it was directed to cities and nonprofits across Northeast Ohio—from Parma Heights and Fairview Park to Holden Forests & Gardens and the Western Reserve Land Conservancy.

With the future of that money up in the air, planters and foresters struggle to find staff or volunteers to mulch, to heal aging oaks, or to stick to any kind of rigorous planting schedule as in past years.

With Holden, there’s also the expected loss of jobs. Both its eight-member Tree Corps Crew, a planting team comprised of paid interns, and its seasonal contractors are fueled primarily by grant dollars. Those that buy trees for Old Brooklyn, for Slavic Village, to dot around buildings owned by the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority.

“So, if you think about it, by not investing in these communities, we’re setting them up for failure,” Amanda Wood, a forester at Holden, said. “Unfortunately, because it’s just expensive to maintain trees, let alone plant them.”

“If we take our eye off maintenance and health, those mature trees, then you’re losing canopy cover,” her colleague, David Burke, the VP of Science and Research, added. “You’re always behind the eight ball, in a way. You’re never quite catching up.”

Both Holden and Heights Tree People told Scene that they would, just like miffed arts nonprofits, be relying more on philanthropy and donors than on money that typically trickled down from Washington, D.C.

Spokespersons from Cleveland City Hall and from Cuyahoga County said that their respected tree-planting initiatives, the city’s Division of Forestry and Cuyahoga’s Health Urban Tree Canopy, were not immediately effected by the federal funding freeze.

“While there is still a state of uncertainty as this plays out in court, we remain optimistic that we will receive this funding,” a city spokesperson said.

Last year, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources helped plant 762,000 trees statewide with assistance from about $9 million set aside to keep Ohio’s tree canopy healthy.

In Cleveland, 1,225 new trees were rooted by the Cleveland Tree Coalition with $661,000 from grant funds—including from ODNR and the USDA.