View UFMP here

Kenmore Working to Preserve Local Canopy - Urban Forestry Management Plan Published

The City of Kenmore has just wrapped up the development of an Urban Forestry Management Plan (UFMP). This plan provides a long-term strategy and framework for the care, protection, and growth of our local canopy. Plan development began in 2024 and was led by the project consultant Facet.

The elements of the UFMP project included an assessment of current practices, procedures, and policies to inform a gap analysis. For this, staff were interviewed to provide a baseline of in-house operations. In addition to staff input, a community workshop was hosted to allow the public an opportunity to voice their opinions and help shape the goals and recommendations of the plan. Thank you to the community for engaging and providing ample feedback during this process!

As part of the plan, a modified canopy and land cover assessment was conducted using existing canopy assessment data and overlaying that with additional equity and heat data. This provided geographic locations where urban heat is greater within the city, where less trees are present, and where lower-income residents might be facing greater impacts accordingly. The resulting information provides a refined map of priority areas for planting that staff will be able to utilize in the near future for plan implementation.

The UFMP also provides recommendations for other changes that will benefit the canopy. They include items like adopting a canopy cover goal, updating street tree requirements, reviewing staffing levels and responsibilities for tree care, and building and maintaining local partnerships for increased success. The plan also categorizes the recommendations based on timeline and cost to assist staff in determining realistic next steps.

Throughout this process, a street tree inventory was also completed. Conducted by Kenmore interns last summer, the data collected included diameter at breast height (DBH), a general health assessment, species, location, and photos. The street tree inventory was conducted to gain a better understanding of the species makeup and health of the city’s right-of-way trees. Once inventory data was fully collected by the interns, Facet performed a quality check and species verification on the dataset. The resulting tree inventory will assist staff in future tree maintenance and asset management. It will also provide helpful statistics to evaluate the current state of our right-of-way trees.

The tree data can be found as a layer in the City of Kenmore’s GIS Viewer. The UFMP can be found here.

For questions about this project please reach out to CAP@kenmorewa.gov.

Funds for the Kenmore Urban Forestry Management Plan were provided by the State of Washington Department of Natural Resources Urban and Community Forestry Program.