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Urban Tree Wardens
The New England region created urban forestry policies that laid the foundation for urban areas everywhere. Initially, surface level policies, such as Nail laws and the introduction of tree wardens, were created to protect street trees. Nail laws consisted of placing a nail in street trees to mark them as part of the city’s responsibility. The nails also served as a protection method from citizens that wanted to either cut these trees down or cause them any harm. Tree wardens were required in Massachusetts starting in 1896 to protect these urban trees. Other New England states quickly followed suit. Each municipality was required to have their own tree warden, someone who was knowledgeable enough about trees to decide how to properly care for them. Some larger municipalities paid these wardens, but many of the smaller municipalities had to recruit volunteers for this position. The wardens' job is to protecting the trees and protecting the public from the trees. Even though shade trees can be precieved as harmless they can also be unsafe and threaten the safety of the public. It is the job of the warden to make sure they preserve as many trees as possible, while keeping the public safe.

The responsibilities of tree wardens have grown and shifted over the years. While each municipality has a tree warden in charge of overseeing the urban forest, they have less time to manage each individual tree. That being said, tree wardens are required to approve the pruning and trimming of any public tree. However, they need not be as involved. Rather than needing the tree warden to be present when the tree is maintained, now there are certified arborists and educational programs, so the tree warden can feel at ease about other people and companies maintaining the trees that he or she approves. The scope of their jobs has increased in modern times. While wardens used to primarily ensure that street trees were cared for and did not cause problems, now they have to worry about the entire urban forest. This includes a great deal of planning and following countless regulations.

As society has progressed and the technology has improved, the roles of tree wardens have adapted. For instance, power lines have become a large issue for public trees and the development of utility forestry has been immense. Wardens now create relationships with utility foresters to ensure they follow the requirements for proper spacing between the lines and public trees. Also, tree wardens and urban forest ordinances are no longer restricted to New England. They now span across the entire United States. While they generally follow similar guidelines, their policies can vary quite a bit. In order to keep policies fairly uniform, the introduction of the Tree City USA program was created by the Arbor Day Foundation in 1976.