Community engagement and solutions to the problem of invasive species in the urban forest

Invasive tree pests are one of the main threats to the integrity of our urban forest. However, state and local programs for early detection and rapid response on urban tree pests are commonly underfunded. Hence, educating both the public and the green industry professionals on how to identify, report, manage, and prevent the spread of invasive tree pests is key to protect our urban trees. In California, approximately 40% of the population and 50% of the green industry professionals identify themselves as Hispanic/Latino, so having a variety of educational resources in Spanish is important in order to reach a wide audience.In this presentation, I summarize the different outreach approaches we've used to engage with our Spanish-speaking audience, the challenges we encountered, and ideas to improve our outreach to this and other non-English speaking audiences.