You might say I’m the “old-timer” on Extension’s “Urban and Community Forestry Team” because I’ve been around the longest - over 26 years.  After a brief period working in the forest products industry, I accepted a job offer from the Alabama Forestry Commission to be the District Urban Forester in Bay Minette.  Like most folks at the time, I really didn’t know what a forester was supposed to do in a city, but it didn’t take long to find out.  Six months later, Hurricane Frederick rumbled through Mobile Bay and devastated the area’s urban forest.  Like most, I was overwhelmed and wondered how people and communities would respond. Would people want their trees again?  The answer came quickly. They did.  For next two years, I learned from wonderful folks how foresters and state agencies can help Alabama cities and towns create tree programs that produce healthier, productive, and safer urban forests.  It is an experience I’ve never forgotten.

A few years later, I moved to the Forestry Commission’s State Office in Montgomery to be the agency’s full-time state urban forestry coordinator.  My situation changed in 1999 when the state’s urban forestry program was transferred over to the Alabama Cooperative Extension System along with oversight of the USDA Forest Service’s Urban & Community Forestry Financial Assistance (U&CF) Program.  Though still employed by the Forestry Commission, I am now assigned to the Alabama Cooperative Extension System through an Interagency Personnel Agreement as the State Urban Forestry Coordinator.

Today, my current role is to help Auburn University administer the U&CF Financial Assistance Program. These federal funds are a terrific resource that helps communities build effective urban forestry programs at the local level.  Cities and towns can use these funds to hire professional staff (i.e. city foresters, arborists) to manage their urban forestry program, to create tree ordinances, to complete tree inventories and management plans, and to form tree boards and local urban tree advocacy groups.  If you’d like to learn how the U&CF financial Assistance Program can help your community, give me a call.

(Neil Letson is a native of Mobile who now resides in Montgomery along with his wife Cheryl.  He received a Bachelor of Science in Forestry from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, is a Register Forester, an ISA Certified Arborist, and a member of the National Urban and Community Advisory Council to the Secretary of the Agriculture.)