Stockton urban forestry team aims to plant 2,000 trees with new county partnership
Little Manila Rising's Urban Forestry team in Stockton is aiming to plant 2,000 trees citywide, now with support from a new partnership with San Joaquin County Parks and Recreation.
The collaboration will expand tree-planting and maintenance efforts, particularly in areas where Stockton parks lack adequate tree canopy and where several trees were lost during the severe 2022 winter storms.
Since launching in 2021, the program has planted about 500 trees, with funding in place to reach nearly 2,000 by 2028 through grants from Cal Fire and the San Joaquin Valley Air District.
"Trees are so important," said Charis Guerzo, the program's communications manager. "They help us breathe easier. They provide shade when it's super hot."
Program director Nicolas Tamayo said their goal is to keep "greenlining the hood" and stressed the importance of trees in communities.
"They're a critical infrastructure to communities," Tamayo said of trees. "They are important for cooling our streets, for providing beauty. They're also really important for capturing rainwater, which in California, so much of our rainwater just washes off into the drain system and out to the ocean."
For Guerzo, the mission is also personal. A Stockton native, she points to stark disparities between north and south Stockton, where fewer trees and heavier pollution — fueled by nearby freeways, the Port of Stockton and the airport — contribute to higher asthma rates.
"There's a lot of different social, environmental, health, and disproportionate impacts on the communities that live here," she said.
The team's work is rooted in history as well. Guerzo said her family ties trace back to Stockton's early Filipino community in Little Manila, and she sees urban forestry as a way to reconnect with that legacy while improving conditions today.
"It is a way for me to reconnect to my roots in Stockton and also reconnect to my ancestors and be part of the work that they were part of, tending to the land," she said.
San Joaquin County Parks and Recreation and Little Manila Rising's Urban Forestry team will host multiple community planting events. On Wednesday, Tamayo and his team will support a tree-planting day for the City of Stockton at 2:30 pm at Van Buskirk Park.
The team also takes volunteers to plant trees and is looking at holding its next big tree-planting event in the fall. The group also offers a 30-week urban forestry training program to expose people to careers in this field.
