Tacoma Tree Foundation
Jun 15, 2023
Lowell Wyse, PH.D.
Tacoma Tree Foundation

Everyone loves trees! They make our cities beautiful, clean the air and water, help us de-stress, and give us shade and cooling in the summer. So why is Tacoma's urban forest struggling? Why do some neighborhoods have more trees than others? And what can we do about it as a community? Lowell Wyse will share about the efforts of the Tacoma Tree Foundation to bring trees and shade to the Tacoma communities that need them the most.

An English professor turned urban forest advocate, Lowell Wyse, Ph.D., is the executive director of the Tacoma Tree Foundation. For over a decade, he taught college writing, literature, and environmental humanities, focusing on the many ways that social and environmental issues overlap. His scholarship resulted in the book Ecospatiality: A Place-Based Approach to American Literature, published in 2021. In 2016, he founded a community group called Tacoma Needs Trees, to call attention to the urban forest crisis in Tacoma, where tree coverage is the lowest of any city in Western Washington. He now lives in downtown Tacoma (Puyallup territory).