an excerpt from Planting The Seeds of Change with Community Forestry

Andy Lipkis, Founder and President of TreePeople, discusses his efforts to bring together different city and county agencies to begin treating the city of Los Angeles as an integrated and sustainable urban ecosystem. Lipkis organized teams of scientists, landscape architects, and community forestry designers to develop environmentally sound low-cost solutions to mitigate the extremes of flooding and drought by planting neighborhood trees and saving rainwater through the creation of a citywide network of storage cisterns. His efforts convinced the city of L.A. and the head of the L.A. County’s department of public works to merge its flood control and water supply divisions into an integrated watershed management and flood control department devoted to the management and protection of L.A.’s watersheds. To learn more watch, “Planting The Seeds of Change with Community Forestry.” (Length: 14 min.)