ATLANTA — Half an acre a day, every day. That’s how much of the tree canopy is being lost across the city of Atlanta. We flew NewsDrone 2 over neighborhoods in Atlanta, giving you a bird’s-eye view of the canopy.
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Greg Levine says some things just don’t make the grade.
“This is a ‘D.’ A ‘D’ minus. It was a fail, right? Because the city had a goal of getting closer to 50%, and it went the other direction,” Levine said.
The City of Atlanta’s tree canopy. Some say the City in the Forest is slipping.
A survey recently completed by Georgia Tech, at the direction of City Council, found that over the course of five years, from 2018 to 2023, Atlanta’s urban forest shrank by 150 acres per year.
On Tuesday, a City Council committee got the verdict and got an earful during public comment.
“Clear-cutting developers are destroying our trees,” one resident said.
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Instead of hitting a target of 50% canopy coverage, the study found it is now 45.7%.
Levine says it could be even lower since the assessment had an end date of 2023. He is the executive director of the nonprofit Trees Atlanta.
He says last year, his group planted 12,000 trees across the city. He wishes more developers would do likewise.
“People notice the trees, but it’s not just noticing. We are under shade right now because it’s too hot to be on the pavement without this tree canopy,” Levine said.
Trees Atlanta says that to reach a 50% tree canopy, Atlanta would need 17,000 new trees every year for the next five years.
But that’s only if no trees across the city were cut down.
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