When he drives down the residential streets near Bernard Drive, Tom Milas, forestry manager for Buffalo Grove, likes to take a long look at the recently planted trees within the parkways between the streets and sidewalks.
Those areas, he said, feature some of the village’s latest work to try and add to the local tree population. Outside organizations also have taken noticed.
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In his first year as forestry manager for the village, Milas and other staff members continued what has become a regular recognition for the village. For the 29th time, the village was recognized by the Arbor Day Foundation as a “Tree City USA,” according to village officials.
“That feels great,” Milas said. “I’ll be honest, I was a little nervous. I didn’t want to drop the ball.”
Dating to the 1980s, the Arbor Day Foundation has recognized the village for various efforts to maintain and care for trees within Buffalo Grove.
Among the factors, the foundation judges villages by the quality of tree-care ordinances and budgetary commitments to tree maintenance when deciding to name a community “Tree City USA,” officials said.
And in Buffalo Grove, the number of trees diminished during the early part of the decade largely because about a third of the tree population were ash trees, which have been dying off because of the emerald ash borer beetle infestation, Milas said.
Public works crews in the village typically plan about 100 new trees a year, he said.
But in 2016, they planted 1,600 new trees to help restore the tree population in the village, he said.
“Our biggest concern was diversification,” he said. “I tried not to put two of the same species next to each other, just to try to prevent clean sweeps of streets. To remove entire roads, like we did, it was devastating.”
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