Despite Investment, East Austin Still Lacks Adequate Tree Canopy

Though the heat came late to Austin this year, a string of triple-digit days in August and September helped push the yearly total to 49, tied for the 10th-highest year on record. Austin-Travis County EMS calls and emergency department visits for heat-related illness went up as well, with a total of 1,200 as of Oct. 10, according to Austin Public Health data, up from 657 last year.

But the heat isn’t distributed evenly: East Austin has historically had less tree canopy cover, both due to natural and man-made reasons, and from the lack of cooling shade, surface temperatures east of I-35 can run 5-10°F above the citywide average.

The disparity has been known for a while now. In 2020, the city unveiled a tool called the Community Tree Priority Map, which showed that tree canopy covered 78% of the land west of I-35 and only 22% of the land east of the interstate. Greening the east side of the city became a core goal of the Austin Climate Equity Plan.

In March 2026, the city formally adopted American Forests’ national Tree Equity Score principles, becoming the first municipality in the nation to do so. The adoption came with a mapping tool, called the Tree Equity Score Analyzer, which gives the city, nonprofits, and the public more granular data on neighborhoods’ heat burden and canopy coverage alongside data on income, employment, and health. The goal was to align the city’s work with national best practices.

And with that national approach came national standards.

Emily King, who serves as the city’s urban forester, said American Forests initially set Austin as a grassland biome, which would have set a canopy goal of 30%, a goal the city has already achieved. So the city pushed back, arguing that it should be classified as a forest biome, with a canopy goal of 50%, aligning with the city’s plan to cover half of Austin with trees by 2050. 

In response, American Forests held listening sessions with city staff, as well as community and University of Texas-Austin partners, and were able to tweak the city’s designations, ultimately classifying Austin as a forest biome.

In 2022, the city had an average of around 41% canopy cover. Canopy cover inventory and scanning happens every four years, with the next update expected to be released in early 2027, according to King.

The city’s Community Tree Priority Map shows Austin’s canopy coverage in 2022 Credit: Image via austintexas.gov

King was clear TESA is a planning tool, not a planting order. “We don’t tend to use this tool operationally or tactically; we’ll use it as a planning tool,” she said. Site selection still depends on survivability, maintenance capacity, community partners, and funding.

What the tool can open is grants for property owners and community spaces to get free trees. For instance, nonprofit Fruitful Commons sponsors mini-grants of up to $5,000 to plant and maintain trees in Austin, prioritizing those planted in areas in need, as identified by the TESA tool.

The city is still investing. In fiscal year 2025, the Urban Forest Replenishment Fund put $4.6 million into 24 community forestry projects, with 77% going to tree planting and canopy expansion, according to the city’s fiscal year 2025 tree report. TreeFolks, which runs the NeighborWoods program under contract with the city, has been approved for more than $4.4 million since 2015 and reported planting more than 5,000 NeighborWoods trees between 2023 and 2024 alone. The NeighborWoods program offers free trees to any Austin resident or any Austin Energy customer.

Camila Restrepo, communications coordinator for TreeFolks, said the nonprofit uses TESA to determine where to plant and how to maintain trees in specific areas, giving them insight with data comparisons such as impervious cover to plantable area in a neighborhood. Survivability remains the hard constraint. “We don’t want to plant trees that are just going to die,” she said.

For TreeFolks, that means being intentional about which specific species are selected for different areas. “There are species that fare better in a right-of-way with the tiniest space, surrounded by concrete,” Restrepo said. “We’re all improving our data to see what species do the best in what spaces.”

One group TreeFolks has worked with in East Austin is the Festival Beach Food Forest, a community-built ecosystem along Waller Street off East Cesar Chavez near I-35. Angelina Alanis, the group’s communications coordinator, said FBFF had broken ground on the forest 10 years ago and intended the forest to provide the community access to food and medicine while also revitalizing the soil.

“We relied a lot on native plants, things that would thrive here without support and are more self-sustaining,” Alanis said.

In 2021, City Council approved expanding the food forest from about two-thirds of an acre to 3 acres. In 2024, volunteers broke ground on the expansion, putting in thousands of volunteer hours planting hundreds of saplings for a native-tree barrier berm to buffer I-35 pollution.

Despite all of the data, research, and work the city has put into closing its tree equity gap between east and west, a lack of coordination from the state upended some of those plans. Within a year, those grant-funded trees were being uprooted to install a pipeline expanding city wastewater in association with the state’s expansion of I-35.

“They didn’t even tell [the] Parks and Rec [Department], who were working with us,” Alanis said. “And it was planted with money the city provided, through the Urban Forest Grant program.”

The group uprooted the saplings that were planted for the berm and the city also stepped in to help relocate a 40-year-old mountain laurel. Since the pipeline is temporary and will be decommissioned afterward, FBFF hopes to replant the berm once construction ends, though that could take up to a decade.

Despite the setback, city and community planting efforts are expanding. King pointed to the new Onion Creek Orchard in Montopolis, a recent ribbon-cutting at a planned food forest near East Slaughter Lane, and a new Tree Ambassadors stewardship program. 

“Tree growth is slow and hard to measure, from year to year,” King said. “We’re talking about biological beings that are long-lived and slow-growing. Between 2022 and where we’re at now in 2026, in terms of city-sponsored projects, we’re really trying to move the needle on this and there are a lot of really positive programs and initiatives to tick off.”

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