Thank you, I’d like to say a huge thank you to URI and the city for this opportunity to talk about our incredible parks and how to make them more accessible, welcoming, and meet the needs of the people who use them. 

Just wanted to briefly bring up a concept about how over time, it seems like climate justice issues are more apparent now in New Haven and now are easily identifiable situations instead of abstract issues far away. Thank you to URI for the phenomenal job in creating more urban canopy in areas with less tree coverage. 

For the two climate justice issues, one being the preposed expansion of Tweed airport and the second being the expansion of the Yale golf and nature preserve to its historic size, the removal of 1500 mature trees and destruction of wetland habitat seems appropriate to bring up in this committee. 

There must be a way to evaluate each tree tagged to be removed and collaborate to save a portion of that canopy aligned in a way reasonable with the restoration efforts. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that this deforestation only benefits Yale golf players with no consideration to climate change or wildlife conservation. 

This destruction of a public park is almost akin to the fight for Kenison square park in it’s sheer abdication of public interest. It’s greenwashing not to voice a missive on this issue and I would begin to loose faith in the system if no retrospective effort is taken to approach Yale about the preservation of some Golf course trees, nevermind the 200k daily gallons of municipal water and pesticides needed already to maintain the golf course. Yale has proven many times during their construction projects its ability to protect certain trees which it has an interest in saving.

 A project I have started is working towards a tree ordinance which will help put political measures in place to prevent tree removal on private property, a practice which can be incredibly condescending to any urban forestry efforts. If interested please come up to me and talk! Thank you so much.