Scenic Jacksonville

Tree Preservation

Trees are important to any community.  Besides cleaning our air and offering us shade, trees can reduce energy costs, buffer sound and wind, and increase property values.  To learn more about the aesthetic and practical values of our City's trees, please visit this website provided by Greenscape, the area's foremost tree advocacy organization.

In 2000, an organization called Citizens for Tree Preservation was instrumental in the passage of a City Charter Amendment which established minimum standards for the mitigation of tree removal. Download a .pdf of our Charter Amendment. If you would like to see a bit of history on the petition drive, community support for this and the campaign to preserve our trees visit our tree preservation history pages via the pull-down menu items at the top of the page.

In March 2002 in Tallahassee, The 1000 Friends of Florida presented its Community Stewardship Award to Citizens for Tree Preservation, Inc. and a Petitioners’ Committee composed of Ann Baker, Susan Fisher, Audrey Gibson, Susie Scott, and Trip Stanly. Scenic Jacksonville, Inc. and Citizens for Tree Preservation, Inc. have agreed to merge, with Scenic Jacksonville, Inc. continuing as the surviving corporation. Click here to view 1000 Friends of Florida Award information.

The Seven Principles for Scenic Conservation include these important principles involving tree preservation and conservation:

Set aside open space for greenways (from Principle I)…;

Establish comprehensive community tree policies that preserve existing trees, control tree cutting and tree damage during construction, add new trees to replace those lost over the years to development (from Principle II)…;

Landscape highways and community gateways to incorporate native vegetation and to reflect themes of local history and culture (from Principle IV)...;

Halt all cutting of trees and vegetation on public land to improve the visibility of billboards (from Principle V)….

Despite the intrinsic values offered by trees, billboard companies often view trees as marginal when there is a profit to be made.  Consider these trees along I-95, cut down in 2007 so that two billboards could be more easily seen from the road:

The end result looked like this:

Here is a YouTube clip illustrating the transition.