Tree panel offers lasting solution

An advisory panel, drafting a plan to "re-tree" public property in St. Tammany Parish, will recommend the creation of a permanent commission to oversee the reforestation of lands denuded by Katrina.

With the loss of thousands of trees during and after the storm, "now is the time for the parish to take urban forestry seriously, or we'll be like Kenner," said professor Buck Abbey of the LSU School of Landscape Architecture. "We're hoping they'll take this issue and roll with it in perpetuity."

Abbey, who has a weekend home in Mandeville, heads the citizens Landscape and Urban Reforestation Advisory Work Group created by the Parish Council in early 2006 to come up with a recovery plan for public lands, which lost up to 80 percent of their trees from the storm and its aftermath.
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