Canopy Crew
Exploring Career Opportunities in Urban Forestry while Preserving and Expanding our Shared Cambridge Tree Canopy Together.
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Become a Canopy Crew Intern
Our tree planting program to expand the urban tree cover of the city is built on volunteer support. To make up our planting team, Green Cambridge is looking for 16-18 year olds. If you’re interested in this paid internship opportunity and want to work with your community to plant more trees in Cambridge, check out the job description HERE and click the form below to apply!
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Sign Up to Recieve a Tree
If you have space for a tree on your property, Green Cambridge can plant a free native tree to help expand Cambridge’s urban tree canopy! To browse the list of trees we are currently offering for this season, click HERE.
Why is this Important?
Since 2009, the city of Cambridge has lost 16.4 acres of canopy coverage every year; that’s the equivalent of more than 9 soccer fields! As of 2019, our canopy coverage was 26% and projected to decline to 10% by 2050 if we do not preserve our existing trees while also planting thousands more each year. By 2050 Cambridge will be much hotter than it is now and simulations project flooding of the Charles River, Alewife, and Fresh Pond areas. These major changes to our City can be slowed by investing in our Urban Tree Canopy.
City-wide statistics of Cambridge trees do not account for the disparities in canopy coverage between neighborhoods. For example, West Cambridge has three times East Cambridge's coverage, inequities that correlate to socioeconomic measures.
Canopy Crew is a paid urban forestry internship for Cambridge high school students aged 16-18. Across 22 training and planting sessions that run from September through April, interns explore how trees impact equity and justice issues in Cambridge and explore career opportunities in urban forestry, environmental science, and community outreach while preserving and expanding our shared tree canopy. Using the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan as a guide, Crew members become ambassadors to the community for the urban forest while taking direct hands-on action to mitigate the generational crisis of canopy loss and climate change. Still, have questions? Visit our FAQ page!
Funded in part by a grant from the American Rescue Plan Act through the City of Cambridge, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the USDA Forest Service through the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation Urban and Community Forestry Program. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.
Planting Sites Around Cambridge
With the help of Kent Johnson, we’ve identified and mapped over 3,000 tree planting sites on residential property!
How This Will Happen
Since 2019, Green Cambridge has been collaborating with Cambridge Rindge Latin and the Cambridge Department of Public Works to bring high school students out to plant trees. The Canopy Crew expands on that effort and launches in Spring 2022. We receive funding from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, the City of Cambridge, and private donations. Our goal is to scale up to planting 300 trees a year in two planting seasons of Spring and Fall. To create a pipeline, we’ll be utilizing a new tree nursery at the new Alewife Park parking garage in North Cambridge provided by IQHQ anticipated by 2024.
Learn more About our New Tree Nursury in Partnership with IQHQ
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IQHQ is a life science and research real estate development trust, invested in the creation of the Alewife reservation and community.
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The Green Cambridge tree nursery is apart of a larger project that includes our own community farm as well as an ecological education center for Mass Audobon to compliment the life science research center at Alewife Park.