Brent Engel, a junior and the Tree Campus Student Representative for UNC, discusses UNC’s exciting recognition as a newly established Tree Campus.

Having UNC be recognized by the Tree Campus USA committee is a very exciting accomplishment. The project started out with the Head of Grounds at UNC Pat McDonald starting a completely new tree inventory of every tree on campus.

The goal was to identify, measure, catalog, and geo-map every tree on campus by the end of the summer. Student representative Brent Engel was in charge of assisting Pat on the identifying and measuring of every tree on campus which totaled to 3,695 trees. After measuring and identification, Brent would then go to the Greeley forestry offices where City Forester Shiloh Hatcher supervised the geo-mapping of the campus trees into their GIS system.

The process of becoming a Tree Campus was extremely tedious and time consuming, but it was well worth the work and time to be recognized by such an important organization. Having such an variety of state champion trees like the Silver Maple on President’s Row and Cork, Amur trees throughout campus is something to be recognized by the campus community and organizations like Tree Campus.

Leaves of a Silver Maple trees, one of the many trees found on the UNC campus.

For more information about Tree Campus USA click here. To read the article about UNC’s Tree Campus status featured n the Greeley Tribune click here.

Congrats to Brent Engel and Pat McDonald for all their hard work paying off!