History

In 1967, before the term Urban Forestry became widely known, a group of foresters, educators and business people working with trees in urban areas organized an information and idea-sharing network they called the California Urban Forests Council. Since 1968, and even more so since becoming a California public benefit corporation and being recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1984, CaUFC has pioneered and shepherded the development of urban forestry throughout California. Through its efforts to promote urban forestry, CaUFC has grown to an organization of over 300 members from the public, private and non-profit sectors, and continues to expand its outreach to the growing network of people interested in urban forestry. Today, there are urban forests councils modeled after CaUFC in most every state in America.

In 1991, CaUFC coordinated and led the Local Arrangements Committee that hosted the 5th National Urban Forestry Conference in Los Angeles. The result was California’s first National Urban Forestry Conference, as well as the first time over 25 tree-related resource organizations in California worked together to forge an urban forestry agenda.

CaUFC achieved another first in 1999, when it convened the California Urban and Community Forests Summit. The process leading up to the summit included meeting with regional focus groups throughout the state to facilitate the most comprehensive and useful summit possible. As a result of both that process and recommendations from the Summit, CaUFC facilitated the creation of seven regional urban forest councils three of which have become chapters of CaUFC.

A report of the findings of the Summit is available here.