Announcements:  Art thanked Kathy Eaton for hosting the Christmas festivities last week, which was a great party. Kathy in turn thanked everyone for coming and for the wonderful time
together.
Art announced we are off December 24 and December 31 for the holidays. Our next meeting will be January 7, and we will meet in HMS conference room.
December 28 we will be hosting students who remain on campus during the holidays. It will be at noon on the third floor of the Student Building. Art mentioned that he had recently visited
the Deming club, which was a very robust club.

Program: Art introduced Allyson Siwik of Gila Resources Information Project (GRIP) who introduced co-speaker Marivel Medel. Marivel spoke about a “first of its kind” project at
WNMU—The Rural Southwestern New Mexico Integrated Urban Forestry Project or the Community Forestry Network. They have received an award of five million dollars from the US Department of Agriculture for use over the next five years, and WNMU will be using a large portion of the grant for academic purposes. This comes from the Inflation Reduction Act which was one of the largest investments to address climate change that America has ever made. New Mexico was extremely competitive and received more funding than all the other states. Marivel introduced Erik Geyer to explain urban forestry. Erik said urban forestry is putting an emphasis on managing trees in an urban setting rather than a forest setting. Urban trees deal with construction, compaction, sidewalks, maybe poor soil quality— different challenges. One of the goals is to bring awareness that trees in our community need to be maintained and cared for and to support a pathway for folks to engage in that. A career path is being developed with WNMU to train individuals so that they can make a living working with trees. There are three key components: The Community Forestry Network; WNMU looking at its campus as a living, working laboratory; and creating a new certificate program composed of a six-course study eventually expanding into a degree program.
Allyson Siwik addressed the community work that is being done. GRIP is teaming up with WNMU and is responsible for implementation at the community level. They are working with six
communities: Silver City, Santa Clara, Bayard, Hurley, Deming and Lordsburg to provide tree planting, planning, logistics to improve health of the tree canopy. Goal is to plant over 1,000
trees during the next four years. Planting to start in fall of 2025.
Mariah Runnels, tree stewardship coordinator, has been working with municipalities to determine where shade is really needed. They have already planted trees in Bayard and Deming and outside the Santa Clara Fire Department. Students from Aldo Leopold High School have been helping.

After a question and answer period, Art presented a thank-you gift to Allyson and the meeting adjourned at 1:00 pm.