{"id":793591,"date":"2023-12-01T13:05:01","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T18:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forests.org\/?p=793591"},"modified":"2023-12-06T13:45:09","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T18:45:09","slug":"an-urban-forest-inflection-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forests.org\/fr\/an-urban-forest-inflection-point\/","title":{"rendered":"An Urban Forest Inflection Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

SFI’s New Urban and Community Forest Sustainable Standard<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paul Johnson remembers the first tree he planted. Of course he does: he\u2019s an urban forester with a passion for trees.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was outside the family home where I grew up,\u201d he said. \u201cFamily legend has it that my father and I found a sprouted red oak acorn on a camping trip in southeastern Oklahoma when I was 18 months old. We took it home and planted it, and it grew there for more than 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until, some time after the Johnsons sold the home, the house caught fire, was later demolished, and the tree died. Johnson has a tattoo made from a photograph of a leaf from that tree.<\/p>\n

Johnson also remembers the first tree he tried to cut down. On another camping trip, Johnson\u2019s father made a stone hatchet for his son, then four or five years old. At home after the camping trip, the young Johnson did what you might expect a kid to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to cut down the family peach tree with that stone hatchet. That didn\u2019t go over well with the family, of course,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

The tree remained standing but was so damaged that it died.<\/p>\n

Johnson, an SAF member, has always enjoyed being in the woods. He grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tulsa has been a Tree City USA for 30 years, and has fond memories of time spent hunting and fishing on and around his family\u2019s property in southeastern Oklahoma. But forestry was not what he expected to be doing for the rest of his life. In high school, he thought he wanted to be a physicist. After high school, Johnson enrolled in the University of Oklahoma not as a physics major, but in a mathematics program, in part because, as a National Merit Scholar, a better scholarship was available.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonors Calculus III, at 8 o\u2019clock in the morning Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, really kicked my butt. So I started looking around at some of the other options,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Johnson, whose mother was an actor and director, had himself been an actor since he was four years old and he performed in community theater productions through high school. So it wasn\u2019t a big leap for Johnson to move from math to the university\u2019s theater program. He also was confident that enrolling in the theater program would help him bring his grade point average (GPA) up, which he needed to do in order to maintain his scholarship.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a grade point average of 1.77 after my first semester at the university, and I had to have a 3.25 GPA by the end of the school year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After a successful spring semester and summer term with 26 hours of classes with a 4.0 GPA, Johnson ended up with a grade point average of 3.26.<\/p>\n

But he knew that theater wasn\u2019t what he wanted to do.<\/p>\n

During the fall semester of his sophomore year, Johnson saw a movie that changed his life: A River Runs Through It. The 1992 film, a coming- of-age story based on the 1976 semi-autobiographical novella by Norman Maclean, is set in and around Missoula, Montana.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a short montage in the movie where they mentioned the US Forest Service and working in forestry for the summer. That spurred me to have a conversation with my mom. She was getting a master\u2019s degree at Oklahoma State University, which had a forestry program, and she said, \u2018Well, let\u2019s go talk to them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

They did so, and Johnson switched schools, just in time for Oklahoma State\u2019s next summer forestry camp, which happened to be held at the University of Montana\u2019s Lubrecht Experimental Forest, just outside Missoula, Montana.<\/p>\n

Johnson earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in forestry and in the process met Rebecca, who was also enrolled in the Oklahoma State forestry program.<\/p>\n

The couple were married a few hours after their graduation ceremony and have been together ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was her summer fling and she hasn\u2019t figured out how to get rid of me yet,\u201d he said, laughing.<\/p>\n

Soon after graduation and their wedding, the Johnsons headed to Colorado, where they both had seasonal forestry jobs: Rebecca with the USDA Forest Service and Paul with the Colorado Forest Service. While she marked timber, Paul helped the state agency with Arbor Day celebrations, outdoor activities for youth, and assisting property owners with management plans.<\/p>\n

Paul found that he enjoyed engaging with the public. Public speaking, he said, is one of his superpowers, and the theater background certainly helps.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeaching is one of the things I love to do,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI have the ability to get up in front of a room full of people, engage with them, and help them understand whatever the topic is.\u201d<\/p>\n

After six months in Colorado, the couple returned to Oklahoma, where Paul began working for a landscaping company in McAllister, a city in the southeastern quadrant of the state.<\/p>\n

Thus began Johnson\u2019s career in urban and community forestry. After working in a variety of roles in urban forestry and landscaping services, in 2004, he took a position as a regional urban forester with the Texas Forest Service, based in San Antonio, and served as the agency\u2019s urban and community forestry program leader, based in Austin, from 2012 to 2021. Johnson served as the International Society of Arboriculture\u2019s president in 2019 and 2020. He joined the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) as senior director of urban and community forestry in 2021.<\/p>\n

When Johnson first heard about the position with SFI, he applied almost on a whim. He had a good job and was happy with his work, but figured that it wouldn\u2019t hurt to update his resume and go through the interview process. After the interview and talking to his colleagues about SFI, Johnson decided that the opportunity to participate in developing SFI\u2019s Urban and Community Forest Sustainability Standard (UCFSS) was too good to pass up, even though it doubled his time to retirement.<\/p>\n

Raising a Standard <\/strong><\/h4>\n

After a two-year process involving ISA, American Forests, Tree Canada, the Arbor Day Foundation, the Society of Municipal Arborists, and numerous other organizations and individuals, the UCFSS was approved by SFI\u2019s Board of Directors in May.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe standard and the certifications that will come with it have the ability to really effect change, to have a true impact in urban and community forestry,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cFor the past two decades or more, I have been trying to figure out how to reach out to people better, to do a better job of balancing out the needs of people and trees. I think the standard is a great way to do just that. It\u2019s going to make a real difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

SAF contributed to the new standard throughout its development. CEO Terry Baker and COO Whitney FormanCook offered their insights and advice, as did Policy and Public Affairs Director Danielle Watson, a member of SFI\u2019s Urban and Community Forest Sustainability Standard Development Task Group. Forman-Cook is a member of SFI\u2019s Resource Committee, which assists SFI in reviewing and revising its standards. Numerous other SAF members helped inform and craft the standard.<\/p>\n

\u201cA heartfelt thank you to the SAF members and all of the other thought leaders involved in bringing this idea to fruition\u2014especially Paul Johnson and our friends and partners at SFI. This is an exciting time for forests across all landscapes, and we\u2019re proud to be a part of this evolution,\u201d said Baker.<\/p>\n<\/div>

The UCFSS\u2019s guiding principles capture the motivation behind developing the standard:<\/strong><\/h4>\n