Urban Forest Health and Safety

Springfield has many large trees that provide immense benefit to our community. In order to preserve these benefits, trees need to be healthy and safe – and that requires ongoing maintenance. Mature tree maintenance generally consists of pruning to prevent, correct, or remove structural defects, rot, and deadwood – while enhancing overall tree form. Where deemed necessary, this work also includes the removal of trees that present sufficient risk to safety within their immediate vicinity. Regular pruning cycles that “touch” every tree in the city (rather than reactive pruning, where crews largely prune based on resident requests & respond to emergencies) will dramatically reduce the number of tree issues and improve urban forest health in the long term.

Through this project, we will prune over 5,000 trees in addition to the 1,000 trees already being pruned annually by the Forestry Division. This will account for nearly 20% of Springfield’s street tree population (which currently sits at ~ 28,000 trees).

The work described above will be performed on trees with trunk diameter greater than 6 inches. Young tree pruning will be performed with hand tools by highly trained crews and volunteers. If you are interested in learning how to structurally prune young trees & become authorized to prune on city streets as a volunteer, call or email Candace at 413-482-0593 or CPowning@springfieldcityhall.com.