BRAF features BRG "Green Machine" in Currents Magazine

By Jef­frey Roedel

Snag­ging the dry crusty out­er bark of a tow­er­ing pine, the claw hook holds strong as Christo­pher Coop­er wraps his chrome-clad diam­e­ter tape around the thick trunk at breast height. The pro­gram spe­cial­ist for Baton Rouge Green tracks his mea­sure­ments with a series of taps as he nav­i­gates an app on the tablet hang­ing around his shoul­der like a holster.

The late June sun is bak­ing these emp­ty sub­ur­ban side­walks, but Coop­er, in a hel­met, neon yel­low vest and match­ing face cov­er­ing, is col­lect­ing data on the trees in a Millerville-area neigh­bor­hood. This is the boots on the ground part of Baton Rouge Green’s con­tin­u­ous BR i‑Tree Inven­to­ry, an online map that can be mes­mer­iz­ing for data hounds — and the rea­son I know that not only is the clutch of trees near my home filled with Brad­ford pears, but a string of oth­er facts about the trees’ ben­e­fits, every­thing from storm water man­age­ment, air qual­i­ty, car­bon, and ener­gy con­ser­va­tion to prop­er­ty val­ue increases.

Res­i­dents often stop Coop­er and ask him what he’s doing near their front yard and why he cares so much about trees — to which he has a lucid, lengthy and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly backed answer.

Many of his mus­ings and facts end up as posts on the group’s Insta­gram page run by Coop­er. The trou­ble-shoot­ing #Inva­siveSpeciesSpot­light is a fol­low­er favorite. Most­ly, though, peo­ple who spy him at work just want to make sure he’s not going to cut the trees down. You don’t know what you’ve got ​’til it’s gone — or even under mis­per­ceived threat, as it turns out.

“Right tree, right place, is always a big con­ver­sa­tion to have with res­i­dents — like this water oak over here,” Coop­er says point­ing upward. ​“Not a great species for the urban envi­ron­ment. Limbs will drop in a few years. It’ll destroy the side­walk and street. Some­thing small­er would be health­i­er over­all, and you can plant more of them to still pro­vide the same car­bon benefits.”

Baton Rouge Green has now iden­ti­fied, mea­sured and mapped more than 45,000 pub­lic trees, and Cooper’s work is far from done, but as he adds anoth­er col­or­ful dot to the map, he stress­es the impor­tance of get­ting an arborist to assess trees on both res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial prop­er­ties every few years. And con­sult­ing one before plant­i­ng any­thing new is cru­cial to real­is­tic main­te­nance. Even with­out an arborist, the organization’s increas­ing­ly infor­ma­tive web­site can do in a pinch.

Coop­er doesn’t just see a street in front of him, he sees an entire urban ecol­o­gy, one his team is work­ing hard to enrich and enliv­en every day through Baton Rouge Green. Look­ing down a seem­ing­ly end­less row of crêpe myr­tles, he sighs. ​“And more diver­si­ty would be nice.”

On Chris­t­ian Street just off Perkins Road sits an emer­ald box, a David Baird-designed, ivy-cov­ered mod­ern home that now serves as the office for Baton Rouge Green’s staff of three.

Inside, exec­u­tive direc­tor Sage Roberts Foley is wait­ing on a con­trac­tor. A small gold key her hus­band Cullen gave her on their wed­ding day hangs around her neck, and she talks at a spry clip. ​“Let’s not use the word beau­ti­fi­ca­tion,” she says. ​“It’s not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all that’s hap­pen­ing. We do so much more than plant trees.”

Indeed, a lot has hap­pened since the for­mer busi­ness con­sul­tant left her posi­tion on the Baton Rouge Green board to take the reins of the 30-year-old non­prof­it in late 2016. Even dur­ing the tenure of her pre­de­ces­sor Dianne Losavio, the trac­tion and impact of Baton Rouge Green was begin­ning to grow out­ward and upward like the healthy branch­es they fight so hard to protect.

Strate­gic plan­ning and a more focused mis­sion, one dri­ven by design and data, has led the change. ​“The last sev­er­al years there’s been a con­cen­tra­tion of what we want to do, a focus of the mis­sion, rather than hav­ing a broad approach,” Coop­er explains. ​“And I think, through our part­ner­ships, like the one with the city and BR Gen­er­al on Aca­di­an Thruway, peo­ple are see­ing us as a trust­wor­thy com­mu­ni­ty partner.”

Justin Lemoine, land­scape archi­tect, is a board mem­ber and has been a part of this increased activ­i­ty — from pilot pock­et parks to the Neigh­bor­woods pro­gram that improves blight in under­served areas.

Lemoine says the group’s staff is com­plete­ly in sync with its large, active board that rep­re­sents a wide swath of indus­try stake­hold­ers con­cerned with the organ­ic land­scape of the five parish­es sur­round­ing the group’s name­sake city. ​“The staff is ded­i­cat­ed, hard-work­ing and aggres­sive about their pas­sion for the role trees play in the health of Baton Rouge,” Lemoine says.

A board is nev­er just a board, and a tree is not just a tree. The effort now is to show this to the com­mu­ni­ty at large, Foley says. ​“We all share one envi­ron­ment with the plants and trees that sur­round us.”

In 2020, the nonprofit’s bud­get is well over $1 mil­lion, triple what it was just a decade ago. Part­ners like Lamar Adver­tis­ing, Exxon­Mo­bil, Rais­ing Cane’s and TEAM Toy­ota are more active­ly involved in projects, and a new pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship has put Baton Rouge Green in charge of dis­trib­ut­ing fed­er­al grant dol­lars for urban forestry projects across the entire state.

“It’s real­ly a one-of-a-kind sit­u­a­tion,” says Mike Strain, com­mis­sion­er of Louisiana’s Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and Forestry, when describ­ing the Louisiana Com­mu­ni­ty Forestry Pro­gram. ​“If Baton Rouge Green didn’t step up, this wouldn’t have ever happened.”

Louisiana Com­mu­ni­ty Forestry Pro­gram is the kind of fed­er­al ‑fund­ed grant pro­gram that is almost always admin­is­tered by state forestry agen­cies. In Louisiana’s case, bud­get cuts and staff short­ages cre­at­ed a quandary. Fed­er­al dol­lars for new urban green spaces and improve­ments were there for the tak­ing, but there was no state office with the time, per­son­nel or exper­tise to over­see the mon­ey man­age­ment, much less the projects themselves.

Enter Baton Rouge Green. Foley says the deal not only increased the group’s reach but also its bud­get for staff and strate­gic aware­ness campaigns.

“As these urban forestry projects take off around the state, there’s a huge net result for the envi­ron­ment, but beyond that they real­ly help encour­age a tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty and become cen­ter­pieces for these areas,” Strain says. ​“When kids plant a tree, it becomes ​‘their tree,’ and it instills in them a sense of pride and belong­ing in their community.”

Sta­tis­tics on the health ben­e­fits of green spaces are sol­id and wide-rang­ing, and Baton Rouge Green Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions Robert See­mann takes notice every time it rains.

“Even when my daugh­ter is at day care on a rainy day, and they have to stay inside, I can tell the dif­fer­ence in her demeanor when I get home,” he says. ​“We need healthy out­doors to be healthy.”

See­mann believes peo­ple are now real­iz­ing infor­ma­tion is a ser­vice and they are appre­ci­at­ing groups that give them data and good ideas more than ever — an oppor­tu­ni­ty Baton Rouge Green is glad­ly seizing.

A for­mer fire­fight­er who served in a forestry bat­tal­ion that sup­pressed wild­fires by charg­ing into treach­er­ous rur­al places out­side the reach of stan­dard fire­fight­ing equip­ment, even now See­mann is a fear­less troubleshooter.

Beneath those tow­er­ing pines, as Coop­er mea­sures them, See­mann dis­cuss­es the prob­lem of ball moss. Baton Rouge Green cleared the entire Down­town Devel­op­ment Dis­trict of the inva­sive plant last year. He describes his orga­ni­za­tion as a nim­ble con­nec­tor that can address prob­lems head on.

“It’s fair­ly easy to find peo­ple who want to fund cool things — it’s when the main­te­nance comes in that things get sticky,” See­mann says. ​“We’re kind of the lubri­cant that makes the city and pri­vate indus­try gears work well together.”

Those suc­cess­ful projects include stud­ies like the recent col­lab­o­ra­tion with Exxon and South­ern Uni­ver­si­ty to exam­ine the effect of biochar — agri­cul­tur­al waste burned into a char­coal sub­stance — on new­ly plant­ed trees, and the pop­u­lar food desert-fight­ing City Cit­rus program.

Spawned from an idea by artist and phil­an­thropist Winifred Ross Reil­ly, City Cit­rus uses plots beneath Lamar bill­boards as open-source city orchards. To date, more than 400 cit­rus trees have been plant­ed, and last year’s City Cit­rus Pick Event yield­ed 4,600 pounds of fruit for the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank.

“The orga­ni­za­tion is real­ly will­ing to take on new projects, new ideas and to evolve,” says for­mer board mem­ber and avid out­doors­man Jim Purg­er­son. ​“Sage’s pas­sion for mak­ing a dif­fer­ence trick­les down, and I’ve seen vol­un­teers turn into sig­nif­i­cant donors over the years.”

Past board pres­i­dent Rawl­ston Phillips III says Foley’s unique abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate var­i­ous groups, sec­tors and stake­hold­ers has ben­e­fit­ed Baton Rouge Green. ​“Her heart is in it, and she has a per­sis­tence in humil­i­ty,” Phillips says. ​“It’s not easy to inter­act with so many dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple and still be effec­tive. But she does that, and she influ­ences people.”

The devel­op­er knows that bal­ance is often under­val­ued in new growth, but sees Baton Rouge Green address­ing bal­ance, be it on the board or in the greater Baton Rouge com­mu­ni­ty. ​“You cre­ate a new path only if every­one buys into the vision,” Phillips says. ​“The col­lec­tive good has be to cen­tral, and it takes a cer­tain humil­i­ty on the board to achieve that.”

That col­lec­tive good got a new brand name this August with Baton Rouge Green’s Healthy Trees, Healthy Lives cam­paign rolling out via out­door and print adver­tis­ing and dig­i­tal­ly ani­mat­ed short films for social media.

Back at the office, See­mann reviews the lat­est ver­sion of one of the videos, which looks like a beau­ti­ful­ly tex­tured card­board dio­ra­ma sprung to life and zoom­ing past jog­gers and rooftops and tree­tops with its catchy, stat-backed mes­sage: Trees mean more than paper.

“It’s real­ly reward­ing work­ing with pos­i­tive, for­ward-think­ing peo­ple,” See­mann says. ​“Even in tiny baby steps we are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. It’s not a light switch. It’s a slow chip­ping away at the crusty shell. We are allowed to have nice things in Louisiana, to take care of things, build bet­ter things and make Louisiana a bet­ter place to live.”

For Foley’s vision, the pan­dem­ic has intro­duced a lev­el of donor uncer­tain­ty that is unusu­al for the group as of late, but those next steps could include involve­ment in the city’s Move­BR tran­sit infra­struc­ture projects, ways of decreas­ing storm water and flood events across the region, and projects for installing urban forestry designs along Air­line High­way and in the medi­ans on Star­ing and Bur­bank boulevards.

“The data is clear,” Foley says. ​“Well-main­tained green spaces, espe­cial­ly green spaces with mature trees, are cru­cial to every person’s qual­i­ty of life. From the air we breathe, to the eco­nom­ic val­ue, to the men­tal and phys­i­cal ben­e­fits: trees are the most cost-effec­tive infra­struc­ture we have. Period.”

Source: https://​www​.braf​.org/​s​t​o​r​ies/2…