By BRUCE FRANKLIN, Colorado State Forest Service

The Las Animas Tree Board along with the Colorado Tree Coalition and the Colorado State Forest Service presented the Eastern Colorado Community Forestry Conference.  The conference was designed to inform community leaders and local citizens to management problems of small community trees. The conference was held on Friday September 29 and 30 in the community of Las Animas at Bent’s Fort Inn a local motel.  The theme of the conference was “Colorado Plains: Protecting, Sharing, and Planning for Tomorrow”.   The Friday afternoon speakers Donna Davis, Vince Urbina, both of the Colorado State Forest Service, gave presentations that showed participates some new ways to achieve diversity in there towns through Xeriscape landscaping and new tree species. The final presenter of the afternoon Dawn Marsh, Grant Writer for the City of La Junta, informed attendees on writing better grants.  Some of the points Dawn stressed where plan a head, read the instructions, don’t be afraid to ask for grants and don’t take it personally if you don’t get it.

Saturday morning began with the subjects of insect and hazard trees.  Dave Leatherman, of the Colorado State Forest Service presented a slide show on common insects in the area. People all seem interested and wanted to know about them and had lots of question for Dave.  Just a note if you have Dave come and talk to a school or chapter meeting give him lots of time because he is a great presenter and can entertain kids and adults with stories of the insect world for hours.

The keynote speaker was Larry Helburg, a Private Community Forestry Consultant. He presented  “What Every Small Community Should Know about Hazard Trees.”  Beginning with what a hazard tree is he took people through hazard tree management and to the point that every community should identify, prioritize, plan, and make hazard tree corrections to reduce a town’s liability.  The final presentation was Keith Woods of the CTC Executive Board and Pearl Getman of Wiggins, Keith shared what the CTC can do for small communities and Pearl told the group what the Northeast chapter has been doing at their meetings.  The chapter meetings are a great way for area communities to get together and share ideas and projects.  Sometime the old adage is right “Two heads are better than one.”

Some of the hopeful outcomes of the conference include the start up of a Southeast CTC Chapter.  This was the first community forestry conference of this type on the eastern plains in years.  We had a lot of good comments and hope to make this an annual event with help from all the communities on the eastern plains.  

By: Wanda Valencia, Fruita Tree Board

The Fruita Tree Board is making a positive influence on the City of Fruita.  The city has received the Tree City USA award for the last seven years.  Alex Valencia chairs the yard of the month competition which runs during the summer months.  Area merchants sponsor gift certificates for the prizes and the information is published in The Fruita Times.  Each year the board sponsors an Arbor Day program and elementary school poster contest.  Area merchants display the posters in the windows of their businesses.  This year the poster contest included the National Arbor Day Poster contest with Loma and Shelledy schools participating and taking part in the program.  Alex raised enough money from business sponsors for the first and second place winners at each grade level to receive savings bonds of $50 and $100.  Fruita Middle School music department provided music.  The program was on the middle school campus, a site where Alex and Wanda Valencia work with the 6^th grade core each year to plant trees, take care of them, and beautify the campus.

Vince Urbina, State Forester, works closely with the group, providing expertise, helping with Sick tree Day, and conducting a pruning workshop each year.  The Tree Board helps with community tree planting and is the mainstay of the city’s Spring Clean-Up day. 

The Tree Board is in the process of updating the tree inventory and is receiving help from the Master Gardeners to do this.  The board is also in charge of the city tree care and the planters and helps with hazardous tree identification and homeowner education.  The city has partnered with the school district on the Sportsplex being built at Fruita Monument High School, so the board is helping with the trees and the landscaping.  The Tree Board participates in the Fall Festival Parade and helps at the library booth.  In December the group has a float in the Parade of Lights and lights luminaries in Circle park at the gazebo.

Other projects include a Memorial tree program, a tree walk Brochure, Tree farm, attending workshops and conferences, and helping to write grants.  The group appreciates the help of the Garden Spot who landscapes the Downtown Merchants box on 6 & 50.  Barb Evans furnishes the plants, plants them, and then hauls water to them to keep them beautiful.  Guy Carlucci, owner of Carlucci Produce, makes the city barrels there look pretty each year by putting in his own time, money, and effort.

By: Wanda Valencia, Fruita Tree Board

The Fruita Tree Board is making a positive influence on the City of Fruita.  The city has received the Tree City USA award for the last seven years.  Alex Valencia chairs the yard of the month competition which runs during the summer months.  Area merchants sponsor gift certificates for the prizes and the information is published in The Fruita Times.  Each year the board sponsors an Arbor Day program and elementary school poster contest.  Area merchants display the posters in the windows of their businesses.  This year the poster contest included the National Arbor Day Poster contest with Loma and Shelledy schools participating and taking part in the program.  Alex raised enough money from business sponsors for the first and second place winners at each grade level to receive savings bonds of $50 and $100.  Fruita Middle School music department provided music.  The program was on the middle school campus, a site where Alex and Wanda Valencia work with the 6^th grade core each year to plant trees, take care of them, and beautify the campus.

Vince Urbina, State Forester, works closely with the group, providing expertise, helping with Sick tree Day, and conducting a pruning workshop each year.  The Tree Board helps with community tree planting and is the mainstay of the city’s Spring Clean-Up day. 

The Tree Board is in the process of updating the tree inventory and is receiving help from the Master Gardeners to do this.  The board is also in charge of the city tree care and the planters and helps with hazardous tree identification and homeowner education.  The city has partnered with the school district on the Sportsplex being built at Fruita Monument High School, so the board is helping with the trees and the landscaping.  The Tree Board participates in the Fall Festival Parade and helps at the library booth.  In December the group has a float in the Parade of Lights and lights luminaries in Circle park at the gazebo.

Other projects include a Memorial tree program, a tree walk Brochure, Tree farm, attending workshops and conferences, and helping to write grants.  The group appreciates the help of the Garden Spot who landscapes the Downtown Merchants box on 6 & 50.  Barb Evans furnishes the plants, plants them, and then hauls water to them to keep them beautiful.  Guy Carlucci, owner of Carlucci Produce, makes the city barrels there look pretty each year by putting in his own time, money, and effort.

Awards Committee  - The goal of the Awards Committee was to seek out nominations for the most outstanding tree-related projects in Colorado and recognize them through the “CommuniTree Award”  The committee received many nominations and although all were worthy of recognition, one was selected for the 2000 CommuniTree Award.   The CommuniTree award went to the Durango Children’s Museum for the Secret Life of Trees.  One of the main goals of the museum is to bring together parents and children in an environment that allows them to communicate and spend quality time together.  This co-created exhibit, “The Secret Life of Trees” has done this and more.  Another of the successes for the exhibit is in teaching children the function and value of trees around our world through fun, interactive, hands-on activities.    Special thanks to the members of the Awards Committee, Wendy Ball, Phil Hoefer, and Ralph Zentz for their time, effort and high standards in judging these nominees.

Champion Tree    The big news for 2000 involved finding, measuring and photographing over 100 new trees in the Denver Metro area. With the help of volunteers, city foresters and the Champion Tree Committee we now have photographs (slides or prints) of 60% of the champions in the database. We are currently rebuilding the Champion Tree Database so it is more user friendly and compatible with the website.   By January of 2001 we hope to have a new listing of state champions on the website with links to photographs of the trees.  Members of the Champion Tree Committee led two tree tours in 2000 - one in the City of Denver, the other for the City of Fort Collins.

Grants – The CTC Grants Committee awarded over $28,000 to twenty-three communities in Colorado in 2000. We were able to do this through our partnership with Plant-It-2000 who helped fund five grants throughout the state.  A new grant "review by mail" was implemented in 2000. This gave more people around the state the opportunity  to be involved in the review process.

Newsletter - It has been a great year for sharing information through CTC NEWS!    We had the opportunity to feature many of the grants we have funded, highlighted the State winner of the National Arbor Day Poster contest, and did a feature story on the brave souls that took part in the first ever Cottonwood Classic.  Many of our articles were also placed on the CTC web site at In addition to the CTC NEWS many CTC members helped in creating a series of articles which ran in the Denver Post.

Education - The Colorado Tree Coalition as the leader in community forestry in the state provides information and conducts training to promote sound forestry practices in the towns and cities of Colorado. Educational efforts are focused into three knowledge streams: urban arboriculture; community enhancement and protection; and urban forestry and the global environment. Questions or training requests in these areas can be directed to the CTC education committee. Please visit our web site to check out future training opportunities.

Natural Disaster Reforestation Fund - The CTC Board of Directors voted to create a natural disaster reforestation fund with the goal of assisting local Colorado communities when their forests are ravaged by fire, flood, tornadoes, snow, wind and ice storms. We will actively seek donations and gifts to build a financial base so victims of these disasters may receive grant assistance for renewing their community forests. Send donations to CTC Disaster Fund, P.O Box 270968 Fort Collins, CO 80527-0968. Requests for assistance require a grant application available from the same address and are reviewed at quarterly Board Meetings.  

-By Vince Urbina, CSFS Grand Junction District

As a young man growing up in Northern California Rich Perske once camped under the tallest tree in America.  It was a coast redwood in a grove of other tall trees owned by the Arcata Redwood Company.  Rich’s father worked for the redwood division of the nearby Simpson Timber Company.  This grove of redwoods would later become a part of Redwood National Park.  Rich now calls western Colorado his home where he works as a program engineer for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT).  His work takes him all over western Colorado but he still finds time for the mountains and their trees.

In fact he and daughter Sarah love to hike and look for animal tracks in the mountains.  They were hiking on the Uncompahgre Plateau west of Grand Junction looking for mountain lion tracks when Sarah spotted a big evergreen tree with low hanging branches.  She couldn’t resist the temptation and immediately climbed as high as she could get in the pinyon tree.  They thought nothing of the tree until Rich noticed a Champion Tree Poster hanging in the office of a CDOT co-worker.   Looking closely at the poster he saw that there was no pinyon pine nomination, although the poster contained other native Colorado conifer trees like blue spruce, bristlecone pine, Douglas-fir and the one-seed juniper.  

His desire to see how Sarah’s big pinyon pine compared to other pinyons led him to the Grand Junction office of the Colorado State Forest Service and the Colorado Tree Coalition  - Champion Tree Program.   From the Colorado Tree Coalition (CTC) web site he found the measurements of the existing champion pinyon pine.  With tape, camera and curiosity in his possession he and Sarah measured the tree and submitted a nomination to Kathleen Alexander the Champion Tree Coordinator. 

This pinyon turned out to be much larger than the former champion.  It has a circumference of 150 inches measured at diameter at breast height (DBH) and stands 30 feet tall.  The former champion only has a circumference of 90 inches at DBH.  The tree’s measurements were verified by Dave Hoefer, the CTC Northwest Chapter representative and Vince Urbina of the CSFS.  An increment core was taken from the pinyon on the day it was verified.  This tree is nearly 500 years old, which means it was around when the area was visited by Spanish explorers Dominquez and Escalante.  These Spaniards visited western Colorado in the late 1700’s.

Finding this pinyon has inspired Rich and Sarah to find more champions.  They both know that the CTC would like to find a Colorado blue spruce that is bigger than the current champion that is in northeastern Utah.  

For more information on the Colorado Tree Coalition Champion Tree's visit  the Champion Tree Page

Two awards were given at the CTC Annual meeting on October 7, in Windsor, Colorado, by President Keith Wood.  The first was a CommuniTree award presented to the Durango Children’s Museum.  One of the main goals of the museum is to bring together parents and children in an environment that allows them to communicate and spend quality time together.  This co-created exhibit, “The Secret Life of Trees” has done this and more.  Another of the successes for the exhibit is in teaching children the function and value of trees around our world through fun, interactive, hands-on activities.  These activities helped them become more knowledgeable about our environment and the immense role that trees play in so many different ecosystems.  Because of the dedication of the staff and the generous efforts of community members, the exhibit has been a huge success.  Children are leaving the museum with a greater knowledge of the natural world that surrounds them, and some great ideas to help keep it growing.  For these reasons the Durango Children’s Museum was awarded the Colorado Tree Coalition 2000 CommuniTree Award.

The other was a special recognition award for Phil Hoefer with the Colorado State Forest Service.  “I speak for the trees.”  When these words are spoken by Phil Hoefer, they ring with commitment, dedication, and passion.  Phil truly does speak for the trees throughout Colorado and the Nation.  For the past thirty years Phil has been the mainstay of the Community Forestry movement within Colorado.  Phil was also one of the founding members of the Colorado Tree Coalition and worked tirelessly to help create the Coalition and make it the organization it is today.   Phil has been a catalyst for the CTC doing a wide variety of tasks including: establishing chapters throughout the State, drafting by-laws and articles of incorporation, serving on virtually every committee we have ever created, working on the Champion Trees of Colorado poster, creating the membership structure, and managing the CTC web page. Yes, Phil does speak for the trees.  But he also speaks, acts and is committed to the Colorado Tree Coalition.   For these reasons Phil received a Special Recognition Award.