Cars drive past recently planted trees at Gary Reese Freedom Park Thursday, June 9, 2022. In an effort to combat the urban heat island effect, the city of Las Vegas is offering tree planting with irrigation equipment to some residents for $20.
Tuesday, June 27, 2023 | 2 a.m.
The city of Las Vegas has a lofty goal when it comes to greenery: Plant 60,000 trees over the coming three decades.
The Las Vegas Tree Initiative is designed to combat the urban heat island effect by increasing tree canopy coverage and building more green space within neighborhoods hit hardest by a combination of extreme heat and lack of greenery. It’s part of the city’s 2050 master plan.
The latest leg of the program calls for residents in east Las Vegas, downtown Las Vegas and west Las Vegas neighborhoods to get trees and drip irrigation equipment installed for $20 per tree. Grant money will pay for the trees the city purchases from tree-planting nonprofits Nevada Plants, One Tree Planted and Impact NV.
Marco Velotta, a project planning manager for the city’s office of sustainability, said the program’s goal for this leg is to plant 250 trees on private property. The plan was approved last week by the City Council.
The trees are meant to help offset the “urban heat island effect,” which drives summer temperatures to greater extremes in heavily developed areas without greenery or shade compared with greener, shadier counterparts. Previous efforts in the tree initiative included planting trees at Freedom Park at Washington Avenue and Pecos Road.
“That’s one of the ways we think we can maybe get some buy-in from the community, especially in the locations where it’s needed the most,” Velotta said.
Brad Daseler, the city’s urban forester, supervises two nurseries that supply the city’s parks and public rights-of-way with a variety of trees that are all either native plants or suited to life in the desert. Daseler will prepare the trees, either desert willows or red push pistaches, for planting. Nevada Plants will handle the planting and drip-irrigation work, and the city will monitor the trees for the next three years.
“The hope is that the majority of them take, we have additional trees planted and some additional canopy coverage that results from it,” Velotta said.
Velotta said the city started its urban forestry initiative in 2008, but this program is the first of its kind. In September 2022, the City Council passed a resolution to plant 60,000 trees over the next 30 years. Earlier this month, the city issued a request for proposals for an urban forestry management plan.
Velotta said he also had his eye on new urban and community forestry grants funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. The U.S. Forest Service has $1 billion in competitive grants between $100,000 and $50 million and match waivers for projects in disadvantaged communities.
Velotta said a $9 million request the city made through that program could help his office scale up tree planting efforts here.
“We probably won’t know about it for at least a couple of months, because that was just submitted at the beginning of June,” Velotta said.
“It’s not going to be a complete solution for everything, but it is one of the steps we can take,” Velotta said. “And because it provides so many benefits, provided we’re doing the right trees and we’re putting them in places needed to reduce the harshness of concrete, asphalt, glass, steel, things like that.”
That includes making sure new commercial developments include plans for strategically placed native or compatible trees in their applications, he said.
“All of that together, we’re hoping to make a big difference in this space,” Velotta said.
The 250 trees in the city of Las Vegas project won’t be planted until next spring, but residents can begin signing up for the program, he said.
