Community Forestry Corps
City & County of Boulder engages youth in climate action while expanding and caring for urban forests
Community Forestry Corps sustains tree canopy in climate-vulnerable communities by empowering and employing youth to provide community-based tree care and protection.
Boulder and PLAY Boulder Foundation launched an urban forestry care and maintenance program, Community Forestry Corps (CFC), in June of 2024, which is poised to scale nationally. Active recruitment and involvement of youth from historically underserved/undershaded communities is a core focus. CFC also fills a gap in urban forestry expansion strategies, addressing the critical need to provide water and maintenance to newly planted trees in their first 2-3 years after planting. Youth employed by CFC are trained and gain best practices in state-of-the-art temperature gathering systems, collecting vital neighborhood-level heat data.
Tree Care & Protection
Boulder's urban forest canopy helps mitigate climate change, especially by reducing heat, which poses significant health risks to our community. The city’s past heat mapping work revealed that canopy cover varies by area of the city, disproportionately affecting low-income neighborhoods and dense urban areas. CFC aims to continue this heat mapping work while enhancing community resilience by increasing tree cover in these vulnerable areas.
CFC training with local arborist, Josh Morin.
CFC addresses multiple challenges facing Colorado’s urban communities:
- How to deliver immediate and tangible value to historically disadvantaged communities when planting trees can take decades to pay out
- How to protect and extend historic federal investments in urban forestry, keeping trees alive amidst drastically fluctuating weather conditions
- How to constantly improve our understanding of where to plant trees, particularly in underserved and under-shaded areas
- How to provide young people with meaningful and impactful options to work on our climate threat, providing hopeful yet practical career paths that support their mental health as well as their local economy
We are proud to launch this initiative. With the Community Forestry Corps, we are mobilizing the energy and commitment of our young people to help protect our urban communities from the growing impacts of climate change and extreme heat using nature-based solutions
Youth Empowerment
While this program will visibly green our neighborhoods — cooling them, enhancing biodiversity, and improving mental health and air quality — the greatest return is the investment in our youth. We're not just planting trees; we're cultivating a generation equipped to build a healthier, more livable tomorrow.
Measuring Urban Heat
In partnership with international urban heat researchers, youth-based heat data gathering and interpretation offers researchers and communities granular heat data from areas with tree planting actions to project future benefits as well as establish baselines for ongoing effectiveness monitoring. To support urban forestry planning and tree planting, national leaders in the urban forestry data and analysis sector provide leading edge urban forestry data systems paired to locally-led planning processes to guide community-designed and prioritized planning, planting and youth program development.
CFC crews receive training to collect urban heat data.
This program gives our students hands-on climate action experience as well as exposure to a wide range of potential career paths in the rapidly growing field of nature-based climate solutions.
Program Partners
CFC is made possible by the climate innovation team at the City of Boulder and is coordinated and run by the PLAY Boulder Foundation alongside national partners the Center for Regenerative Solutions and CAPA Strategies .
PLAY Boulder is excited to be a part of the important work of empowering our next generation in the work of natural climate solutions to combat climate change. Along with our partners in the city and county, as well as the brilliant educators with Classrooms for Climate Action, we hope that this inaugural youth corps can make an impact in our community for years to come
