European standards for tree care

Jaroslav Kolarik, Arboricultural Academy, Czech Republic

A suite of three new European arboricultural standards have recently been published – with three more to come.

Standardisation of technologies in the field of tree care is a constant challenge. Due to the cultural and climatic fragmentation of European countries, this is a problem that has been overlooked for a long time. Individual countries have either created their own standards and norms or simply adopted certain provisions from neighbouring states without creating comprehensive technological regulations. The introduction of the European certification for arborists (European Tree Worker and European Tree Technician, awarded by the European Arboricultural Council – EAC) assumed that individual certification centres would take care of the appropriate level of quality and ensure candidates reach a sufficient professional level.

When the idea to create European arboricultural standards was first discussed, in Europe only the UK, Germany, Austria, Holland and Spain had their own standards for practical tree care (pruning and planting). Of course, the American ANSI standards should not be overlooked either. However, in all cases these were materials available only commercially. In the Czech Republic, and a little later in Slovakia, we tried to create a different concept – to compile a set of standards that are available free of charge and bring together the knowledge and experience of experts from across the industry. The idea was based on the fact that if a group of top experts pass on their complete know-how developed over a lifetime of experience, it is fundamentally difficult to set a meaningful price for this service, so why not make it a voluntary contribution from which future generations of arborists will benefit?

This idea was very well received and within the Czech and Slovak Republics it almost caused a revolution in access to highly relevant and up-to-date information on tree care. The standards created in this way were quickly implemented in city ordinances and in the technological regulations set out by managers of large tree populations (road authorities, railway engineers, managers of watercourses, utility managers etc.).

In 2018, this idea was supported at the pan-European level by the EAC, which approved and financially supported the creation of the European Pruning Standard working group, whose task was to examine the possibility of a constructive discussion about and schemes for the creation of industry standards with international validity. During two meetings, a group of experts from all over Europe attempted to test this concept. We must not underestimate the fact that representatives of 12 countries with completely different languages, cultures and history in the field of arboriculture met and tried to communicate with each other in English, which was not the mother tongue of anyone present. However, the outcome of the meetings was very positive. Subsequently, the Czech coordinator – the Arboricultural Academy – submitted an application to the national agency of the Erasmus+ programme, which was accepted a year later. In 2019, the Technical Standards in Tree Work (TeST) project was launched; it had the task of creating the first three European Arboricultural Standards: Tree Pruning, Tree Planting, Tree Cabling/Bracing.

The development took place using several tools. The first stage was, of course, an analysis of existing published experience, supplemented with current opinions in the field. At the same time, we tried to study all known differences directly in the field using case studies and thus to reach an overall consensus. If this was not possible – usually for reasons of historical, climatic or taxonomic differences between individual countries – we allowed the individual represented states to prepare a National Annex for each standard, in which it was possible to specify and explain different approaches to some aspects of work. These national annexes are the main tool for the exchange of detailed information for professionals across Europe. All negotiations took place in the form of in-person meetings in partner countries ... and then Covid hit.

As we all experienced first hand, we basically lost the opportunity to meet in person, but all the deadlines and content of the project remained. The Czech national agency for Erasmus+ came to our aid, so we were able, thanks to the fact that the budget was not spent on travel expenses, to equip ourselves technologically and start the transfer of experience using online meetings and demonstrations. In the beginning this was very rough, but we gradually got used to the new platform, and as a result we were able to hand over the first set of intellectual outputs of the project to the industry in August 2022.

The main material consists of three standards defining the main areas of practical arboriculture, in English and German. At this point, it is necessary to emphasise the enormous help of colleagues from the Arboricultural Association, Simon Richmond and Sarah Bryce, who selflessly and highly professionally helped us with the translation of the original written text into high-quality English. A number of partners have decided to translate the standards into their language outside of the framework of the project support, so currently the first published title (Tree Pruning) has already been translated into six languages and others are in process too.

As I have already described, a national annex was created for each standard by all of the 12 represented countries. National annexes are usually only available in English and the national language.

The remaining financial resources of the project were spent on creating fact sheets which focus on some important topics in more detail: Pruning of young trees, Deadwood management and Tree architecture.

A special additional output is the creation of the SDSTrees application (acronym for Shared Database of Stabilized Trees), thanks to which it is possible to register and check installed cabling and bracing systems for free with a direct exchange of information between the client (tree owner) and the arborists who carry out the installation and inspections of the systems.

All outputs are available to the industry on the project websites: www.europeanarboriculturalstandards.eu and www.sdstrees.eu.

The recordings of the lectures and workshops that were presented at the conference in August will all be published on the YouTube channel of the NGO Arboricultural Academy (https://1url.cz/0r3Ut).

The Czech national agency of the Erasmus+ programme is also supporting the follow-up project: European Consulting Standards. This is already underway and the output will be three more standards on: Tree assessment, Tree value calculation and Protection of trees during development activities. These will be delivered by 2024.

Thank you for your support and we look forward to sharing experiences with the application of these standards in the coming years. If you have any comments or suggestions, please contact the project office at info@arboristika.cz.

This article was taken from Issue 199 Winter 2022 of the ARB Magazine, which is available to view free to members by simply logging in to the website and viewing your profile area.