After a massive hailstorm on May 20, 2024, damaged nearly all of the trees in the small eastern Colorado town of Yuma, Colorado State Forest Service staff and interns deployed to help the town assess the damage.
On one day in July, 14 CSFS staff and interns evaluated more than 700 trees around town. The exercise provided tree-inventory training for interns from Colorado State University and Front Range Community College. Documenting the trees’ conditions also helped Yuma plan for recovery and supplied the needed details for the town’s Colorado Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) grant application. In October, Yuma was awarded a $170,000 Colorado IRA UCF grant to help with tree removal and pruning on their road to recovery after the storm.