WASHSINGTON – Funding that helps Washington communities plant and sustain trees is on the chopping block in the state Legislature.

House budget legislation would cut funding for the Department of Natural Resources’ Urban and Community Forestry program, a move that agency officials say would dismantle the program and jeopardize millions of dollars in federal grants.

“It’s not a reduction. It’s an elimination,” said Will Rubin, communications manager at the Department of Natural Resources.

Without the state funding, the Department of Natural Resources says it would be unable to maintain current staffing levels or meet the criteria to unlock additional federal funding, which has supported the bulk of the program.

Agency officials say they were blindsided by the House’s decision to eliminate funding for the program, which has been operating for over 35 years.

“Nobody was even suggesting it as an idea,” said Rubin. “We were all very surprised.

While the House operating budget proposal cut $1.8 million for the upcoming fiscal year and $3 million for the following biennium, the Senate’s plan kept the funding in place.

The House and Senate each propose about $79 billion in total operating budget spending over two years.

The state funding comes from Washington’s cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy state allowances for their air pollution.

According to the Department of Natural Resources, around $5.5 million in federal grants are currently funding urban forestry projects around the state. Those federal dollars require state matching dollars or staff time, said Rubin, and the House budget puts that at risk.

If the funding reduction is approved, the program would have to cut about seven employees, he said.

The grants fund communities from Seattle to Spokane. Projects include creating urban forestry programs and management plans, tree inventories and planting trees all over the state.

Funding for the program has steadily increased over the years. In 2008, the program received just over $100,000 in federal grants. In 2024, with the help of the federal Inflation Reduction Act, it received over $4.6 million. The Inflation Reduction Act, a sprawling law, delivered $1.5 billion to the U.S. Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry program.

“They just got to a place where they were able to assist a lot more people and this will reverse that,” said Garth Davis, forestry resource manager for the Spokane Conservation District, who previously served as a councilmember on the Washington Community Forestry Council, an advisory group for the urban forestry program.

In 2021, the Legislature passed House Bill 1216, which directed the program to administer at least 50% of state funding to vulnerable populations and created a mandate to conduct a statewide inventory of urban forests. Without state funding, the program would be unable to do so.

“We know it’s a tough fiscal year. We know there’s a lot of hard decisions, but if they could reduce and not eliminate, that would obviously be preferred,” said Megan Dunn, Washington Community Forestry councilmember representing the Washington Association of Counties.

Another councilmember, Tim Kohlhauff, who leads the Spokane County Master Gardener program at Washington State University’s Extension Office says the urban forestry grants often go to low-income areas “where residents just don’t have the discretionary funding to plant trees themselves.”

Low-income communities in particular most often experience the effects of heat islands, or areas with little vegetation that experience higher temperatures. The urban forestry program directly combats that problem.

“In a severe heat event, that could be the difference between life and death,” said Rubin. “Everybody deserves to reap the benefits of living in a healthy, vibrant urban forest.”

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