Tacoma Tree Foundation: Growing Tree Equity and Community Resiliency in Tacoma's Urban Forests

Speakers Bio's

Lowell Wyse - An English professor turned urban forest advocate, Lowell Wyse, Ph.D., is the executive director of the Tacoma Tree Foundation. For over a decade, he taught college writing, literature, and environmental humanities, focusing on the many ways that social and environmental issues overlap. His scholarship resulted in the book Ecospatiality: A Place-Based Approach to American Literature, published in 2021. In 2016, he founded a community group called Tacoma Needs Trees, to call attention to the urban forest crisis in Tacoma, where tree coverage is the lowest of any city in Western Washington. Lowell’s love of place is informed by his family farm in Michigan, the Kansas plains, the Colorado mountains, the Hopi high desert, Chicago’s Rogers Park, and the Pacific coast of Lima, Peru. He now lives in downtown Tacoma.

Jess Stone - An ISA Certified Arborist with a Master of Forestry Science degree, Jess Stone is the Board President of Tacoma Tree Foundation. A Natural Lands Steward for Pierce County Parks and a US Army veteran, She is experienced in critical area permitting, habitat restoration, and urban forestry. You’ll find her going door to door advocating for environmental issues, leading volunteers in habitat restoration, or just sitting on her back porch with a cabernet watching the deer prune her tomato plants.