For the eighth year in a row, UW-Eau Claire has been designated as a Tree Campus Higher Education college by the Arbor Day Foundation.
University landscape architect Daria Hutchinson said the certification began in 2017, when 100 trees were planted on campus to commemorate UW-Eau Claire’s centennial year.
“We’ve just built and rebuilt on that since then,” Hutchinson said.
Every year, the university holds an Arbor Day event. She said this event is typically held in the fall, and it consists of educational activities like invasive species removal, tree planting and nature walks. The next Arbor Day event is scheduled to happen around homecoming next semester.
In addition to the Arbor Day event, Hutchinson said the certification requires one service learning activity every year. Hutchinson said a student created an online map containing all the trees on campus, and each spring, summer and fall she works with two students to measure and document each tree.
According to Hutchinson, she and her team went through one round of tree documentation in 2022, during which 1,663 trees were mapped. Hutchinson and some students are in the process of recording trees on the entire campus a second time, now including the area around The Sonnentag Center.
“We use the information for a couple different things,” Hutchinson said. “All the heights and diameters of the trees can continuously be used to create a carbon offset for STARS reporting. We’re also using it for diversity planning — since all the trees are mapped, we have percentages of each species.”
As of the 2022 survey, 76% of all trees on campus are native to Wisconsin. This is documented on an online species locator map. The trees sequester roughly 25 tons of carbon annually, which is the equivalent to the emissions of 2,540 gasoline-powered cars driven for one year.
Any students interested in contributing to this project, which would fulfill all 30 hours of service learning requirements, are eligible to apply. Hutchinson said students are selected on a first come, first serve basis. Additional information is posted on the university’s website.
Hutchinson said part of the Tree Campus criteria requires that the university has funds dedicated to tree maintenance. UW-Eau Claire currently spends roughly $50,000 per year on trees, and the Student Office of Sustainability (SOS) provides about $15,000 of that.
Third-year ecology and environmental biology student Kristen O’Brien is a current SOS student director.
“Truly, SOS is the only reason that our university has been Tree Campus certified so far,” O’Brien said.
According to O’Brien, SOS has a number of additional projects in the works. She said SOS recently had a successful Earth Claire event, and that the campus-wide food recovery program has recently been approved to continue next semester.
“It’s really cool that we’ll be able to continue that work,” O’Brien said.
Other ongoing projects SOS is working on include the expansion of composting on campus and a bike share program.
Looking ahead to the fall semester, O’Brien said the SOS meetings will be held on Tuesday nights at 5 p.m. in Davies Student Center — a change from their current meeting time on Wednesday evenings.
O’Brien said applications for executive board members of the club will open up in the next few weeks, and that any interested students can find the applications on the SOS Blugold Connect page.
Hutchinson said she looks forward to continued work with students toward maintaining the campus’s tree life.
Wojahn can be reached at [email protected].
