[The Greening of Detroit worker Ameen Taylor patting dirt around a newly planted tree]
Ameen Taylor (interview): “It beautifies the city. And not only that, it gives more oxygen, too, as well. So, you need trees for the oxygen, for the shade.”
[Auger machine at work]
Hilary Franz (interview): “Across the board, in every state and in our state, we have underinvested in our urban tree canopy. We’ve underinvested at the federal level, we’ve underinvested at the state level. And obviously, we’ve also underinvested at the local level.”
[A worker rolling a tree into a hole that he and others have dug for it]
[A vacant business, including traffic in front of it, as well as a rusted gate]
[A downtown trolley passing by]
Jenni Shockling (interview): “You know, that’s really the goal is to keep the community healthy and benefiting from these trees as the critical city infrastructure that they really are.”
[Newly planted trees in a suburban Chicago neighborhood]
Trinity Pierce (interview): “But they can actually help filtrate our air and then our urban heat island, all of our built environment — that’s so much heat. Trees actually cool environments. And more and more now we’re seeing flooding — they can actually help slow down and filtrate floodwater.”
Asia Dowtin (interview): “We have 10 years of guaranteed support for urban and community forestry programming across the country. Compared to what we’ve had in the past, I don’t know that you can get any better.”
[The Greening of Detroit employee Andrew Decker watering some trees]
Jenni Shockling (interview): “I think it’s game-changing. And it’s awesome to see that the federal government is recognizing the value of urban forestry as a function of infrastructure and how it does have the ability to kind of raise all ships.”
[A worker planting a tree]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.