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CITY OF SOUTH BEND ( OFFICE OF THE CLERK Steve Sass, Chair of the Ecological Advocacy Committee with offices located at 321 E. Walter Street, stated, Aaron covered most of what the first slide (referencing a presentation which is available in the City Clerk's Office) talks about. We are in our second (2nd) full year now. We were formed via Park Resolution 004-2016 in August 2016 as an advisory council to the Park Board. So some of the requirements we have within our creating document includes us periodically reporting, not just to the Park Board but also to the PARC Committee. So that is one (1) of the reasons why I am here but I would also like to walk you through the process of how I got to be in front of you today. Mr. Sass continued, So the Natural Resource Management Plan, which you have in front of you, is what we work the most on. The objective we worked the most on lasts was working with the VPA staff in creating this document. The thing we brought to this document primarily was the bottom right hand corner and identified topics of concern. This was intended to be an outline of some of the concerns we have for ecology within the community and, specifically,within the VPA. We broke that down into the six (6) major categories. If we look specifically at the management of trees, there were are few things we outlined. One (1) was the species of the plant. We wanted to take a look at what sorts of things we were recommending to be planted and be ecologically responsible. This includes replanting and restoring native trees. Those are most important to our ecosystem that sustain our whole ecosystem. Plants are the basis for terrestrial food life. We also wanted to take a look at some of the things we had in terms of invasive tree species and what we are doing to curtail planting them. Mr. Sass went on, There were two (2) documents produced by Brent Thompson who is the City Forrester and they are pretty suitable for planting within the South Bend City limits. They were a spreadsheet and a companion PDF document that talks about the various tree species. So I enlisted the aid of a colleague of mine, Amanda Smith, who is from Hamilton County Parks because this is really something that is larger than just South Bend.I consider myself not just to be an ecological advocate for South Bend or St. Joseph County, but for the State as a whole. So we started looking through the lists of the trees which were being recommended to be planted within the City limits and just by looking at the lineage of some of these trees, we have no idea what it is because we weren't identifying it by the full taxonomic name. So we drilled through this and came up with a report. Aaron has a copy of it and I would be happy to send it to anybody that is interested in looking at it. It is a forty-seven (47) page report that assess the tree species that we are recommending be planted by citizens as well as City Planners within the City of South Bend. We really dug into the reasons why we were condoning certain trees and not others. Mr. Sass continued, We broke the trees down into five(5)different categories. The green category are the ones that are pure and native trees. Those are trees that have existed here in their natural forms since the last ice age. Those are the ones with the highest ecological benefit to the wildlife that lives here and the ones who really sustain the ecosystem. The yellow category represents trees that are native to North America and have been cultivated by the nursery industry. They have been bred for desirable shapes and colors as well as trees that were native to North America but not necessarily Indiana or South Bend. The orange grouping are trees that are completely exotic to North America and have been brought here from China, Japan or Eurasia and other temperate zones around the world. They are contributing none or very little to the ecosystem but are not necessarily causing problems, either. Then the pink category are the ones that are the non-native trees that we see signs of jumping cultivation. There are records of these not staying where they were planted. Then the red category represents trees that are actually on the Indiana invasive EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 1227 W.Jefferson Bvld 1 South Bend,Indiana 466011 p 574.235.9221 1`574.235.9173 TM574.235.55671www.southbendin.gov 2