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Oshkosh board hears kickoff of urban forestry strategic and management plans
Summary
Consultant Rich Howard of Eosign presented a grant‑funded urban forestry strategic plan and management framework to the Oshkosh Advisory Parks Board, outlining canopy and inventory assessments, community engagement steps and a timeline toward a final plan by Dec. 31, 2025.
Rich Howard of consulting firm Eosign presented the kickoff of the City of Oshkosh’s urban forestry strategic plan to the Advisory Parks Board on June 9, outlining inventory and canopy assessments, governance reviews and a community engagement survey the team expects to launch in a matter of weeks.
Howard said the project is grant funded by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and will deliver a strategic plan and a separate, boots‑on‑the‑ground management plan, with a target of a final plan adopted by the common council by Dec. 31, 2025.
The plan will combine an existing tree inventory with a tree canopy assessment using 2024 imagery and historical comparisons (2014 and 2018) to measure change over time and identify priorities. Howard said the canopy work will quantify current tree cover percentage and trends, and the inventory will provide species‑level and health information from on‑the‑ground data. He noted emerald ash borer as a likely factor in declining canopy cover but did not present a definitive cause.
Howard described the project’s scope to include: a policy and ordinance review for tree governance; benchmarking against peer communities; identification of staffing and funding needs; recommendations for preservation on public and private lands; and best management practices drawn from industry standards. He said the team will produce short-, medium‑ and long‑term strategies rather than a single fixed planning horizon.
Board members asked about community engagement and timing. Howard said the project team has drafted survey questions and expects to go live with an online community survey “in a couple weeks” and run it for about 30 days, and that the consultant team will also hold open‑house meetings and attend community events such as the farmers market. He also said the firm can run an i‑Tree analysis of ecosystem services as part of the inventory to estimate economic returns such as stormwater benefits and energy savings.
No formal board action was taken on the presentation. The next steps are completion of the state‑of‑the‑urban‑forest report and launch of community engagement; drafts and interim deliverables will be shared with staff and the board before the final plan is presented to the council.
