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Claremont Conservation Commission
Welcome to the Claremont Conservation Commission's page dedicated to environmental education. Here we will share information of public interest on the environment and to advertise upcoming public events sponsored or hosted by the Commission.
This section on urban trees was taken directly from the 2017 Master Plan.
Urban Trees
The trees that line the City’s streets and grace the City’s cemeteries and parks are also valuable resources. Urban street trees provide multiple benefits including (but not limited to): 3
- Traffic calming
- Safer walking environment
- Aesthetics
- Reduces Storm water runoff
- Rain, sun, heat protection
- Pollution absorption
- Lower ambient air temperature in summer
- Public health
- Added value to adjacent businesses and homes
- Longer pavement life
- Screening
At present, there is no plan, no guideline, and no budget for the management of the City’s urban trees. (There is a small budget for the removal of dead trees in the City’s rights-of-way.) The Parks and Recreation Department oversees trees in the City’s parks, while the Public Works Department responds to calls regarding hazard trees and dead trees in the City’s rights-of-way and cemeteries. However, there is no policy for determining ownership of trees in the right-of-way and no guidelines for determining whether a tree should be removed or not.
Future Challenges and Opportunities
Claremont’s forest resources are critically important to the City’s character and natural resource inventory. They warrant continual careful stewardship to improve and maintain their health, beauty and ecological functions and to prevent a future of “benign neglect”. Therefore, the 2008 Forest Management Plan should be updated right away, beginning with those parcels that have been logged since 2008. Such updates should be sure to include plans to monitor invasive species in newly opened areas.
Careful oversight of upcoming “cuts” on the remaining parcels must be provided to ensure adherence to the existing plan. Public outreach and education is also very important and the Conservation Commission should make every effort to inform the public about present and future plans and activities.
The City’s urban trees also warrant careful stewardship. The City should create a management plan for the trees in the right-of-way and in the parks and public spaces within the City Center. A policy and guidelines for managing trees in the rights-of-way outside the City Center and in the City’s cemeteries should also be developed.
City Center
The City Center would correspond roughly to the extent of the City Center Zoning Districts, which include the CR-1, CR-2, PR, CB-2 and MU zones.
City Center
Forest Resources Goals
Goal 1. Recognize the value of the City’s urban and rural forests in the character and quality of life in the City.
- Objective 1.1 Improve management of the City’s urban trees
Action Items:
- Create a policy and guidelines for management of trees in the public cemeteries and in the public rights-of-way outside of the City Center.
- Create a Management Plan for trees in the public spaces of the City Center.
1 Identified as “ecologically significant” in 2013 Natural Resources Inventory.
2 Identified as most important to survey respondents, March 2016
3Urban Street Trees, 22 Benefits, Specific Applications, Dan Burden, 2006, https://www.michigan.gov/documents/dnr/22_benefits_208084_7.pdf
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In November of 2023, the City Council accepted the Tree Policy 2023, which fulfills action items 1 and 2 above. You can read the plan here.
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Natural Resources Inventory
In 2013, the Conservation Commission published the Natural Resources Inventory1 for the City. In addition to providing an inventory of the City's natural resources, it provided a list of ten ecologically significant areas in the City. In the coming months, we will use this space to hightlight each of those areas.
ECOLOGICALLY SIGNIFICANT AREAS (pg. 41)
The final outcome of any NRI is the identification of ecologically significant areas (ESAs) within the community. ESAs are those areas in the City that exhibit unique ecological characteristics that deserve special attention in terms of land use. This further provides a basis for informed land use planning, recognizing that some areas have high ecological value based on the various attributes present.
This area has been flooded several times this year, starting with spring snow melt and followed by flooding from heavy rains we had during the summer.
From the UNH website, we can learn why these ecosystems are so special:
Why are Floodplain Forests Important?
- Changes in precipitation patterns, such as longer periods of drought, unpredictable large storms, higher flows, and run-off events which can erode areas and change species composition.
- Increases in invasive species.
- Slow migration of southern species north.
1Jeffry N. Littleton, Moosewood Ecological LLC., PO Box 9, Chesterfield NH