- Events
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Programs
- Living Roadways Caring for public trees and green infrastructure
- City Citrus Expanding healthy food access with urban orchards
- LA Community Forests Statewide Urban & Community Forestry outreach
- More than Paper® Spreading the news about the benefit of trees
- BR Public Tree Inventory Collecting data to manage our urban canopy
- Canopy Kids Look, learn, and discover with us!
- Ways to Give
- About BRG
Louisiana Community Forests
Serving as the statewide Urban & Community Forestry outreach agency for Louisiana and its people
Trees and other forest resources in developed areas are essential infrastructure that require management and maintenance.
LCF was created to cultivate and promote stewardship of community forests and green infrastructure throughout Louisiana. Through this program, Baton Rouge Green cooperates directly with the U.S. Forest Service and Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry to communicate the benefits of community forests, as well as provide technical and financial assistance for local partners in their stewardship efforts.
What does LCF do?
Louisiana Community Forests (LCF) provides two forms of assistance to communities across the state:
Technical Assistance
LCF staff can provide expert support to assist with urban forestry management capacity, troubleshooting issues with forest management, or guiding you through to making the first steps of your urban forestry program. Email or call Christopher Cooper, chris@batonrougegreen.com, 225-381-0037.
Community Assistance
LCF provides Community Assistance Grants for urban and community forestry support via Cooperative Agreements for Assistance (CAA). LCF directly pays the contracting vendor for the services or products they provide a community that will benefit or enhance that community’s capacity to manage their urban forest. These CAAs require 1-to-1 match funds or in-kind services from the community.
Check out several Community Assistance projects that are currently underway or completed below.
Additional Resources
“This collection contains current information regarding trees (urban forests and street trees) and stormwater runoff mitigation at the site or neighborhood scale.”
“We provide leadership in sustaining the economic, environmental and social benefits of the South’s forests, and work to identify and address existing and emerging issues and challenges that are important to southern forests and citizens.”
The U.S. Forest Service Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Urban Forestry in Your Community.
“Urban Forestry South (UFS) delivers quality urban natural resource science, technology, and information to improve the long term sustainability of urban ecosystems.”
In accordance with Federal law and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) civil rights regulations and policies, this institution is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, disability, and reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Program information may be made available in languages other than English. Persons with disabilities who require alternative means of communication for program information (e.g., Braille, large print, audiotape, and American Sign Language) should contact the responsible State or local Agency that administers the program or USDA's TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and TTY) or contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at (800) 877-8339.
To file a program discrimination complaint, a complainant should complete a Form AD-3027, USDA Program Discrimination Complaint Form, which can be obtained online at https://www.ocio.usda.gov/docu..., from any USDA office, by calling (866) 632-9992, or by writing a letter addressed to USDA. The letter must contain the complainant's name, address, telephone number, and a written description of the alleged discriminatory action in sufficient detail to inform the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (ASCR) about the nature and date of an alleged civil rights violation. The completed AD-3027 form or letter must be submitted to USDA by:
(1) Mail: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, D.C. 20250-9410; or (2) Fax: (833) 256-1665 or (202) 690-7442; or (3) Email: program.intake@usda.gov.
More than Paper®
More than Paper is a branded, multi-media outreach program. The purpose of More Than Paper® is to raise awareness regarding the myriad ecological, economic, social, and human health benefits that trees provide for our communities. Check out more here.
Share the Fruit
Share the Fruit is an engaging community driven agroforestry program developed to address food insecurity, Urban & Community Forestry knowledge, environmental inequity and resiliency in underserved communities. Through a partnership with The Walls Project and Baton Roots, 100 trees were planted at 8 East Baton Rouge Housing Authority Sites. Learn more here.
Healthy Trees Healthy Lives
The quality of life and health that humans enjoy in urban spaces is in large part due to the work our community trees do for us! Check out more at healthytreeshealthylives.org
Tree City USA
Assisting and encouraging municipalities to earn their Tree City USA designation, and helping Louisiana’s colleges and universities achieve Tree Campus USA status.
Recent Community Assistance Grants
Lake Charles Canopy & Stormwater Assessment
The Green Infrastructure Center (GIC) will map the land cover for the Lake Charles Metropolitan Area of Louisiana and use that data to create a Trees and Stormwater calculator (TSW Tool), and workshop with local government staff on how to apply the data and set goals and strategies for the urban forest. GIC’s TSW Tool models the mitigating effect trees have on stormwater volume and pollution levels at a watershed-scale. GIC will also audit the City of Lake Charles’ codes and ordinances for practices and policies that support healthy urban forests.
LCF GRANT: 33,693
LAKE CHARLES MATCH: $46,000
New Orleans Tree Canopy/Protection Study
LCF provided assistance to facilitate a public-private venture to generate data and analysis on both public and private trees in the City of New Orleans (Louisiana), via an Urban Tree Canopy Resource Assessment (Resource Assessment). This data is being used to develop effective strategies, regulations, and/or management plans that address the goals such as, promoting and expanding New Orleans’ urban forest to reach 50% tree canopy by 2030, promoting tree preservation and planting on private property, and establishing criteria for “heritage trees.”
LCF GRANT: $9,887
NEW ORLEANS MATCH: $9,887
Baton Rouge Stormwater Calculator Tool
LCF funded the Green Infrastructure Center’s (GIC) effort to map the land cover for Baton Rouge Parish Louisiana and use that data to create a Trees and Stormwater calculator (TSW Tool) for Baton Rouge. GIC’s TSW Tool is used to model the mitigating effects of trees on stormwater volume and pollution levels at a watershed-scale. GIC also developed a proto-type site level stormwater calculator in Excel that can be easily used by developers and site managers.
LCF GRANT: $15,000
BATON ROUGE’S MATCH: $15,000
City of Alexandria Urban Forest Management Plan
LCF assisted the City of Alexandria with funding for PlanIT Geo to develop an innovative, forward-looking, and actionable UFMP for the City’s valuable urban forest resources. This also involved support to in updating City policies, ordinances, standards, practices, and guidelines and urban forest analyses from public tree inventory data.
LCF GRANT: $20,050
ALEXANDRIA’S MATCH: $20,050
Mandeville Public Tree Inventory & UFMP Update
The City of Mandeville, LA, currently meets the Managing Community requirements as defined by the The National Information Center for State and Private Forestry Community Accomplishments Reporting System. Looking toward the future, to maintain their Managing Community designation, the City of Mandeville would like to ensure the existing resource assessment for public trees contains relevant data; uses GIS based methods for data collection; and provides appropriate data access/management capabilities. LCF is assisting Mandeville by granting funds to update the initial inventory to reflect changes, edit the Management Plans stressing building in mechanisms necessary for sustainability of the Plan, provide a prioritized listing of worst offender trees needing immediate attention and provide a timeline, total costs, resource assessment, and recommended actions to be taken.
LCF GRANT: $25,000
MANDEVILLE’s MATCH: $25,000