by Isabelle Shepherd, Executive Director, Alliance for Cape Fear Trees
When I tell folks that I’m the Executive Director of the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees (the Alliance), the reactions are often delightfully wholesome. “I got a tree from you at a giveaway!” they’ll say, beaming. They share how the tree is doing or the role it has played in bearing witness to their lives, the growth of their children. Sometimes they pull out their phone to show me proud portraits of thriving magnolias, vibrant maples, or cheerful hollies. It’s sweet and human and grounding.
But more often, what I hear is frustration: “Can you stop them from cutting down all the trees?” they ask. (Of course, more expletives are usually involved.) They mourn the stately oak that once greeted them on their daily commute, or the woods they used to explore in their childhood, now razed for yet another luxury development or apartment complex. Their voices hold grief—and urgency.
Folks are fired up about trees, and I get it. Our urban canopy and region’s forests are being hit by the combined one-two punch of increasingly severe storms and rapid development. Tree loss is no longer subtle; it’s systemic. And the stark impacts on our shared landscape cannot be ignored. In a region where trees anchor our sense of place and provide critical environmental services—cleaning the air we breathe, cooling our streets, buffering us from floods—their absence is palpable. And irreversible.
I come from a background in historic preservation, and much as I used to say, “You can’t build a new old house,” I now espouse that you simply cannot plant a new old-growth forest, nor recreate the value mature trees hold in the form of stormwater mitigation, wildlife habitat, and carbon capture. Those benefits cannot be fast tracked.
We can’t recreate what’s been lost. But we can protect what remains.
For much of the Alliance’s history, we’ve combatted the issue of deforestation within our urban centers primarily through tree plantings and giveaways. They’re joyous events. Everyone loves getting their hands in the dirt, or the comforting weight of a young tree cradled in our arms as we walk to a recipient’s car, sometimes buckling a serviceberry or birch into place for the ride to its new home. We walk away seeing a clear difference in our landscape. We regrow our canopy, tree by tree.
But we’re a small organization. In addition to myself, the Alliance’s staff consists of one part-time program coordinator managing the Tree Stewards volunteers who care for the street trees we’ve planted in the City of Wilmington’s rights-of-way. A hands-on Board and committed volunteers multiply our impact—but they don’t add hours to the day. So we have to be strategic with our most limited resource: time.
When I first came into the role, I thought long and hard about our mission statement: to preserve, protect, and plant trees to enhance the quality of life and health for present and future generations in the Lower Cape Fear area. I noted that “preserve” and “protect” come first—before “plant.” That sequencing matters, and I took it to heart.
It’s noble to plant 50 trees. But saving 50 mature trees? Or 50 acres of biodiverse forest? That’s a game-changer. For a lean nonprofit, the return on investment in advocacy is clear.
As I was taking the helm at the Alliance last winter, the campaign to save Sledge Forest was gaining steam, and we proudly joined it. Located in northern New Hanover County, this ancient floodplain forest is one of the last of its kind in the southeast. It protects us from storms, filters pollutants, and shelters imperiled plant and animal species. And to be clear, saving Sledge Forest is a big, long-term goal. It will take time—plus persistence, perseverance, and partnership—to achieve. We’re in it for the long haul.
But fundamentally, the movement to save Sledge is a reactive one. We’re fighting an uphill battle because the development threatening Sledge is legal by right, adhering to New Hanover County’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). The root of the issue isn’t just the bulldozers—it’s the policy that paved their way.
Which is why the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees has created Code & Canopy, a working paper packed with policy priorities, suggested code amendments, and examples from sister cities and comparable counties. Distilling lessons from other communities facing similar challenges, this aspirational document outlines a practical path to embed tree protection into zoning regulations and development standards, resulting in smarter growth and climate-conscious planning. In the months ahead, we’ll present this roadmap to elected officials and local government staff, urging its adoption as a bold step toward stronger protections for our city’s urban canopy and our region’s mature forests.
We’re tired of playing whack-a-mole, trying to block ill-conceived and short-sighted development projects. It’s a veritable onslaught. We want proactive protections, not just reactive pushback. We want the code to reflect the community’s values—and we know those values include trees. According to the City’s Urban Forestry Master Plan, over 94% of Wilmingtonians strongly agree that trees are vital to our city’s well-being. It’s time our codes caught up with that consensus.
At the Alliance, we believe that advocacy is one of the most strategic tools a small nonprofit can wield. When funding is finite and the need feels infinite, we choose to focus where the impact is exponential. In practice, that means turning community values into enforceable standards—so the shade we love today is guaranteed tomorrow.
