MISSOULA — The debris from the windstorm that hit Missoula in July has been cleared and damages to properties have been fixed, and now the trees of Missoula are being cleaned up or taken down.
Urban Forestry Specialist Marie DuCharme says that federal funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is being used to now clean up the damage to the trees.
“Well, it was devastating at first. I mean, you know, as someone who's worked in horticulture for 20 years of my professional life, it was hard,” DuCharme said.
The City of Missoula’s Urban Forestry department is small, but the number of trees they oversee is not. Within city limits, Missoula has around 35,000 trees. During July's storm, 5,300 trees were damaged and 450 need to be removed.
"They're starting in the Franklin of the Fort neighborhood, and then they're going to be working systematically through the city. Trees with the orange-ish red tag on them that have the City Missoula logo and QR code on them, those are removals,” DuCharme told MTN.
The removal of the trees provides city officials with a chance to assess the areas and decide what to do next.
“Every cloud has a silver lining, and we will move forward. We've lost a lot of trees, but now we have potential for reforesting some areas of town,” DuCharme said.
While the planting of new trees is being planned out and discussed, there’s more of a process than just putting a seedling in the ground and planting.
“We need to reassess, once all the hazards are mitigated, go back, and then we have to look at every single tree site where we have our removal and determine if we can plant just adjacent to where that tree was, and then not have to do stump grinding, or if it's a site where we have to grind the stump out completely and replace the tree right where it was,” DuCharme said.
That means the next phase of tree recovery in the Garden City is to plant and replace the ones that were lost.
“As far as species selection, we want to make sure that we are planting trees that are going to survive for the next 100 years. As urban forestry specialists, our job is to plant for those 100 years out. So, we want to look for trees that can be climate adaptive, that can handle the droughts that we see,” DuCharme said.
DuCharme also says that picking the type of tree is also important.
“Missoula is every year now we are seeing multiple days over 100 degrees, and that's a lot to ask of a tree, you know, to grow well in that kind of condition, but then also we don't have soils that retain water well," DuCharme explained. "They're very porous, and we also have the big temperature swing to the negatives too, and we can get below low 30 degrees here. So I mean it's a lot task of any tree species."
City officials are asking for patience as crews move through Missoula.
“If they see the crews coming through, they are putting out no parking notices about 24 hours in advance of work, so if people could just move out of that area and then just stay clear of the area work is actively going on, that would be greatly appreciated,” DuCharme said.
