Tampa's tree canopy thins out following back-to-back hurricanes
TAMPA, Fla. - Tampa leaders received an update this week on the city's tree canopy that thinned out following back-to-back hurricanes last fall.
Councilman Bill Carlson asked the city's Parks and Recreation Department for a report addressing the number of trees that needed to be removed as a result of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The department's director, Tony Mulkey, presented his report on Thursday.
What they're saying:
"Our forestry division oversees the street trees for over 1,300 miles throughout the city of Tampa, plus all the parks and the cemeteries with the storms that came through. We had a huge task to take care of all the unsafe conditions with trees that were failing, either fallen or branches or anything that caused any kind of risk to the property or to people's safety," Mulkey told FOX 13 Friday. "I think there were over 800 trees that we had to deal with and orders kind of produced from the damages."
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Mulkey said the hundreds of projects that were addressed in the weeks that followed the storms equaled the number the city typically sees in a nine-month period.
Dig deeper:
Carlson's motion also requested staff to halt non-emergency tree removal projects while they look into reports of individuals improperly claiming they worked for the city or FEMA and removing healthy trees and branches.
"I made a motion immediately to call for an end to that, because they were not just tearing down trees that were endangering anyone, they were just haphazardly cutting down limbs of trees," Carlson said. "They were dumping them in people's yards and so people who had debris from Helene sit there for weeks waiting for the city to pick up, suddenly now they have tree branches that they didn't even ask to be cut down."

Carlson said the reports appeared to stop after the council passed his motion to pause certain tree projects.
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He and other council members, meanwhile, also voiced concerns that some homeowners were taking advantage of the storms to also remove healthy trees without permits.
"We want to make sure that if people are cutting down trees, they're cutting them down for the right reasons. And to cut down a tree in the City of Tampa, you have to have a permit," Councilwoman Lynn Hurtak told FOX 13.
"We take our tree canopy very seriously in the city of Tampa," added Mulkey. "We've been scored very high on the level of urban tree canopy compared to other cities throughout the country and the world, and we want to maintain that. If people are removing trees for non-legitimate reasons, that's going to impact that level of canopy, and it has so many benefits for the community."
By the numbers:
The Parks and Recreation Department's Forestry Division completed more than 2,100 work orders in 2024, including nearly 1,200 emergency responses, many of which were for tree removals following the storms.
What's next:
Hurtak said the city plans to begin addressing the thinning tree canopy through a $1 million federal grant awarded prior to the hurricanes to replace trees that have been removed due to storms and development.
The city has also asked USF to complete a new tree canopy study in the coming months.
The Source: The information in this story was gathered by FOX 13's Aaron Mesmer, who interviewed city officials about Tampa's tree canopy.
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