Oregon Dept. of Forestry hires new urban forestry expert to assist communities around state
SALEM, Ore. (KTVZ) – People across Oregon in the new year will be getting help on urban tree-related issues from Brittany Oxford, a community assistance forester hired recently by the Oregon Department of Forestry.
“Brittany will be working closely with representatives from various cities, counties, regional governments, tribal nations, civic and non-profit organizations, and schools and colleges,” said ODF’s Urban Forestry Manager Scott Altenhoff. “She’ll be giving technical assistance and leadership to help improve green infrastructure and solve tree-related issues.”
Altenhoff said Oxford will be the urban forestry team’s lead in forming and refining local community forestry management. This includes:
- encouraging tree inventories and assessments
- providing model policies, plans, and regulations
- helping set up citizen advisory boards and community engagement programs
- consulting on urban forest maintenance programs
- providing professional training for agency staff
“Climate change and many other threats, such as introduced pests and diseases, are seriously impacting urban trees,” said Oxford. “So I’m excited to help people learn more about their urban forest and what they can do to better preserve and enhance the trees around them.”
Before joining ODF, Oxford worked most recently for the City of Portland’s Urban Forestry program, helping with their second street tree inventory. Before that, she worked at Pistils Nursery in north Portland, propagating and caring for plants, working with customers, writing a twice monthly blog and controlling pests.
Oxford also has extensive experience in the Rocky Mountain region. She worked as a research assistant for the Center for Natural Lands Management. Here role there was studying pollination ecology in endangered prairie systems and presenting research findings.
After graduating with a degree in Environmental Science from Northern Arizona University in 2017, she worked in Arizona as an AmeriCorps field botany intern for various federal land management agencies. There, she surveyed areas burned by wildfires, collected and processed seeds of wild plants for later sowing, and checked to see how well reseeding was going in areas where native plant life was being restored.
She also had earlier experience as a forest monitoring technician for the Landscape Conservation Initiative and as a field research assistant for the Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research. At the latter she focused on pollinator research, including plant and insect identification.
Oxford replaces Katie Lompa, who retired earlier this year from ODF after decades of service as a community assistance forester.
