The Virgin Islands Resource Conservation & Development Council, Inc. (V.I. RC&D) and its partners, the St. Croix Environmental Association (SEA) and Geographic Consulting, LLC, are pleased to announce the receipt of a $404,000 grant from the USDA Forest Service / International Institute of Tropical Forestry (IITF) funded through the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act to implement the St. Croix Hurricane & Hazardous Fuel Mitigation Project.
The project is a management, planning, job training and outreach program. Its goals are to promote hurricane and fire risk reduction, community health, forest health improvement and job training. The project will assess forest health by mapping trees in the right-of-way (ROW) along the major roads of St. Croix and incorporate the data into a Geographic Information System (GIS) database. This mapping will provide an Urban Forest Inventory, Tree Hazard Assessment & Mapping (tracking those trees most likely to lose limbs or fall during a storm as well as a map of where they are located), and a Baseline Map of vegetation for local utilities and public entities for roadside tree management.
The St. Croix Hurricane and Hazardous Fuel Mitigation project will also develop a Roadside Tree Management Plan; conduct hurricane damage mitigation and hazardous fuel reduction assessment & planning along major roads in St. Croix; promote urban roadside tree restoration by planting and caring for new trees; and conduct training workshops to provide / improve urban forestry job skills [GIS training and arboriculture training].
“The most significant part of the project is the GIS component, which will bring our tree management capabilities into the 21st century,” said V.I. RC&D Project Manager, Carol Cramer-Burke. “Other municipalities have been using GIS and GPS [Global Positioning System] technologies to manage their tree resources for decades, and this grant will now bring that capacity to the USVI.”
For more information on USDA Forest Service Recovery Act funds, visit:
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Development and maintenance of this website partially funded through grants received from the USDA Forest Service / International Institute of Tropical Forestry. 
