The University of Montana was honored with the Arbor Day Foundation’s 2015 Tree Campus USA. UM arboretum committee chairman John Goodburn says this is a recognition of UM’s commitment to effective urban forest management.

“It is recognizing work that is being done on the UM campus in landscaping the campus with trees for some years, but it also recognizes a level of support from the administration to committing to funding new planting,” said Goodburn. “It is also recognizing campuses that have an educational component in regards to student learning opportunities.”

Goodburn says this is something new to UM and that they hope to remain part of Tree Campus USA next year.

“The Tree Campus USA is a designation that you apply for and then maintain through time,” Goodburn said. “It is the first year that we have applied for it and been honored with this. We perhaps could have done it early, but we didn’t have all of our components together. We have certainly been working toward making this campus more treed.”

UM received this recognition by maintaining a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures for its campus tree program, an Arbor Day observance and student service-learning project.