TREE COUNT.(Bram Gunther, New York City's forestry and horticulture director)(citywide census of street trees)(Interview)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 23-MAY-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

As a "thoroughly, thoroughly urban person," growing up on West Sixty-sixth Street, Bram Gunther didn't care what type of trees were on his block. Gunther is the city's deputy director of forestry and horticulture, and he now knows that his old street is lined with honey locusts, and that there are more than thirty-three thousand of them in the city. "It's amazing, the human capacity to not notice things that you're not interested in," he said.

On a recent morning, Gunther crossed Fifth Avenue and headed east on Sixty-fourth Street, embarking on a dry run to test the forms and equipment that are to be used in a new citywide census of street trees, due to begin next month. Over the summer, more than a thousand volunteer "tree stewards" will comb the five boroughs, noting the presence, size, and...

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