Expanding Reno’s Tree Canopy with Matt Basile
Matt Basile, Urban Forester for the City of Reno, has played an essential role in the One Truckee River Workforce Program since its inception. As Urban Forester, he oversees, maintains, and cares for roughly 30,000 publicly owned trees growing on city-owned property, city-owned right-of-way, and within the city parks system. He supervises a crew of five arborists, who go out and perform that work. With the One Truckee River Workforce Program, his role includes serving as a liaison between the City and the Program, providing skills trainings, and supporting the crew as they build towards careers in landscaping and urban forestry.
Back in 2023, Matt Basile and Iris Jehle-Peppard, executive director of One Truckee River, began discussing a workforce training program. They shared the goal of supporting local community members aiming to reenter the workforce, fulfilling a need for skilled workers in the forestry industry, working towards a healthier river, improving quality of life for Reno residents and visitors, and accomplishing deferred maintenance of the tree canopy along the river – all in one.
Why Downtown Reno?
The urban stretch of the Truckee River east of downtown Reno was the place to do it. Historically, Matt explains, control of the flow and channelization of the Truckee River has negatively impacted the ability of native trees to thrive, creating an environment that’s more appealing to invasive varieties. “It got to a point where, without significant help or investment, our small crew couldn’t make a sizeable impact,” he notes. “Having the One Truckee River Workforce focus on this area has been instrumental in providing the labor we need to make a lasting impact on the local environment.”
Specifically, he’s most excited by the improvements he’s observed along the riverbank in John Champion, Fisherman’s Park 1, and Fisherman’s Park 2, “where the workforce crew was able to repair park irrigation facilities that had essentially been abandoned.” With updated irrigation, Basile’s enjoyed seeing new areas blossom – with beneficial, native vegetation replacing bare dirt – and once-struggling mature trees beginning to flourish anew.
Working With the Workforce Crew
The One Truckee River Workforce Crew is comprised of individuals facing barriers to employment. Its workers are clients and graduates of Crossroads, a Washoe County program that offers a supportive living community, addiction treatment, and wrap-around services. The Workforce Program is managed through a partnership between One Truckee River, the City of Reno, and RISE.
For Matt Basile, working with the crew is a new experience – and an overwhelmingly positive one at that. He’s enjoyed both teaching them about urban forestry and watching the program’s participants succeed at growing their professional skillsets and improving their lives. He’s especially enjoyed instructing them in tree climbing, sharing with them how work can be both interesting and fun.
Often, the Workforce and City of Reno crews work together. Basile notes, “our coordination has not only been a good learning experience for the Workforce participants, but helped members of our City Urban Forestry team develop their perspectives. It’s been an enriching experience for all of us.”
Expanding Reno’s Tree Canopy with Matt
Matt Basile grew up in Chicago and studied Natural Resources at the University of Illinois, where his professor encouraged him to pursue urban forestry. He worked as a City Arborist at two different Chicago suburbs before moving to Reno in 2017. Here, his team focuses on tree maintenance. This includes treatment of diseases and pests, pruning, removal of dying or hazardous trees, improving public safety, and expanding the tree canopy. This includes seeking out new tree species that are likely to be successful in Reno’s increasingly hot and dry summers.
For example, in Lake Park, Basile and the City of Reno with support from Nevada Division of Environmental Protection and Environmental Protection Agency partnered with One Truckee River, Friends of Lake Park, and Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful at a volunteer tree planting event. Together, we planted and are testing a variety of new trees species that haven’t been planted in Reno’s parks before – to determine how suitable they will be to our local environment. A year later, we’ve seen success in the program and, as a result, Basile has ordered more of these tree species to plant in other locations in the City of Reno. He’s finding Mediterranean climate oaks, including those from Southern California and Mexico, to be great fits for the Truckee Meadows. (In Lake Park, the oaks we planted were Quercus comptoniae, Quercus engelmannii, Quercus gambelii, and Quercus lobata.)
In improving the City of Reno’s tree canopy, Matt views tree diversity as especially important. “It makes for a more resilient urban forest,” he tells us. “The greater the variety of trees we have, the more resistant we are to different pests and diseases that might attack them. The greater variety of trees also prepares us for changes over time by having different adaptabilities and tolerances to the extreme temperatures we experience in Reno.”
Working in the City’s tree nursery, the One Truckee River Workforce Program has helped Matt Basile to expand the variety of resilient trees while expanding their professional skillsets. Here, they’re able to propagate species of trees that may not traditionally be grown commercially – but are hardy, low maintenance, and well-suited to our local environment. This includes growing native trees from collected seeds at the nursery, then transplanting them to areas adjacent to the Truckee River. Reestablishing native tree species is important, Matt emphasizes, because modifications to the river’s flows have allowed invasive species to out-compete them.
What’s Next?
This fall, Basile looks forward to continuing to collaborate with the Workforce Program. As the warmer months draw to a close, we’re focusing on removing dead and declining trees. Since our Workforce brings on new workers as experienced crew members graduate and find longer-term employment, Basile is getting ready to train this year’s team in large tree removal and tree climbing.
Matt Basile concludes, “I’m encouraged by the degree of success our program has had so far, and how One Truckee River has been running it. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to continue our work, continue to grow the program in new directions, and use its success as a blueprint to be able to do more and find additional partnerships.”