Miami-Dade kicks off initiative to plant more trees
MIAMI - The future could be a lot greener for Miami-Dade as Mayor Daniella Levine Cava kicks off her initiative to plant more trees to cover more of county property.
"Miami is a hot place, we're called the Miami Heat for a reason," Miami-Dade Commissioner Keon Hardemon said.
And that's why shade is a valuable commodity, yet some places in the county are quite barren, particularly around underserved neighborhoods.
"I was born in the James E. Scott public housing community," Hardemon shared.
Today the only part of the projects where Commissioner Hardemon grew up in is a preserved building, but not too far away from it are blighted shuttered public housing projects, many of which reveal how little trees were planted years ago.
"I remember it being extremely hot in Miami I remember just having to deal with it," he said.
Now, change is coming, the Mayor's initiative aims to cover up more of the county.
"And so, we know that many of our lower-income neighborhoods do not have the same tree canopy. We have a goal by 2030 to have 30 percent tree canopy especially in these areas," Mayor Levine Cava said.
That means you can expect to see more trees near county-owned buildings, and on county property.
"When we played football and baseball when we had travel teams that played us that was a competitive advantage that we had, because we knew could deal with the heat much better than other people would," Hardemon said.
But heat can also cause illness. Research by the University of Florida from 2010 to 2020 found that 215 people died from heat in the state. They project this number will rise because of climate change, and they found that people died from heat, year-round, not just in hot summer months.
"This is a health solution, it's about protecting humans," Jane Gilber, Miami-Dade County Chief Heat Officer said.
Altogether the county only owns 7% of the land within Miami-Dade, so it can't fix the problem alone, that's why it says the rest is up to private property owners to pitch in.
"There's a misunderstanding about what trees do in wind events, they actually do protect they act as a barrier," Lisa Spadafina, Miami-Dade County DERM Director said.
The Division of Environmental Resources Management (DERM) can help people find the right tree to plant, and there's also a county program to adopt a tree, that is get two free trees.
