He speaks for the trees! Brand Richter (UNT Ecology BS major) has been awarded the Keep Denton Beautiful Vicki McCombs Forestry Award!

From the Keep Denton Beautiful website: The Urban Forestry Award is named for Vicki McCombs, a longtime KDB volunteer who was instrumental in beginning the Community Tree Giveaway program 20 years ago. She was a staunch advocate for all of KDB's urban forestry program efforts.

Brand, like Vicki, is an advocate for Denton's urban canopy. This past year, Brand, along with Dr. Jaime Baxter-Slye and Clay Thurmond, launched the Denton Trees iNaturalist project "to inform on tree species diversity, distribution and candidates for local designations of tree conservation status." Brand educates residents and engages interested residents through thought provoking articles on Denton Trees, a local Facebook group with nearly 1,000 members. We'd like to think Brand's interest in urban forestry was nurtured as a KDB volunteer.

Here is the iNaturalist project with 4,263 observations of 168 species around Denton: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/denton-trees

To learn more about our Ecology programs, visit: https://biology.unt.edu/undergraduate-programs/ecology-program