Why International Society of Arboriculture Certifications are Important

Ryan Gustafon, district manager of Davey's South Minneapolis office, talks about Interntional Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certifications and his involvement in the Minnesota Society of Arboriculture (MSA) chapter.

In this episode we cover:  

• What is an ISA (International Society of Arboriculture) certified arborist?  (:44)
• ISA certified arborists' code of ethics (1:57)
• Taking the ISA certification test (3:07)
• Local ISA chapters and involvement (3:59) 
• What does the Minnesota Society of Arboriculture (MSA) do? (4:21) 
• MSA tree climbing competition (5:04)
• Continued education on new arborist practices (7:25)
• Minnesota tree pests (8:16) (8:46)
• Emerald ash borer and its effects (9:34) 
• Additional arborist certifications (11:24)
• How do you become an ISA Board Certified Master Arborist? (12:39)
• Rewards of being an arborist (13:34)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about why it's important to hire a certified arborist, watch our YouTube videos, Why Hire A Certified Arborist and TCIA & ISA Accreditation: Hiring A Tree Company.

To learn more about ISA certifications, visit the International Society of Arboriculture's Certification and Credentials page. 

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
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Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!  

Transcript

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Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees Podcast, we know trees are the answer. I'm excited this week to be joined by Ryan Gustafson. He's a district manager at the South Minneapolis office of the Davey Tree Expert Company. Ryan, I love this topic. We're talking all about ISA chapters and ISA-certified arborists. Welcome to the show.

Ryan Gustafson: Thanks, Doug, for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Doug: Tell me first, let's just start off with what is an ISA-certified arborist. What does that mean?

Ryan: ISA, that's the International Society of Arboriculture. That's the acronym it is. They have a certification to bring professionalism into the industry. To become an ISA-certified arborist, you have to have a certain amount of experience or education or a combination of the two to sit down and take the exam. If you don't have any formal education, you have to have three years of practical experience in the field. If you have a two-year degree that's related to arboriculture, you have to have two years of field experience.

Then if you have a four-year degree, then it's just one year of field experience. Then you can sit down and take the exam. Then once you pass the exam, it's just a written exam. There's no field testing or anything like that. Once you take the exam and pass it, every three years you have to obtain a certain amount of CEUs or continuing education credits. That's through different workshops and stuff like that.

Doug: The thing I tell people all the time about a certified arborist is not only their expertise but this code of ethics, that is so important. If someone's going to come to your house and look at your landscape, take a look at the trees, you want somebody that you can trust. That's why for me, a certified arborist, I tell people every day, I get questions, garden questions. I'm like, "Just call a certified arborist." Talk a little bit about that code of ethics.

Ryan: When you become a certified arborist, it's saying that the basics of tree care and what's best for the trees, the proper pruning, treatments for the trees, and stuff like that. It's the entry-level certification to look for in any arborist that you're working with just to make sure that they have baseline knowledge about trees and they're doing things properly. If you're doing things improperly, you can get checked by the ISA and potentially have your certification taken away.

Doug: For you, tell me about taking the tests. When did this happen? Was this exciting back in the day to become an ISA-certified arborist?

Ryan: Yes. I took it probably in 2006. I took it about a year after I got out of college. I have a degree in urban forestry from the University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point. I wanted to take it as quickly as I could, so all of that fresh knowledge was in my head. It was pretty exciting. Back in that time, they didn't have computer testing. It was in person, multiple choice writing the Scantron. That was a bit nerve-wracking, but now they have available testing sites where you can go and take it on a computer.

Doug: Fast forward to now, you are the president of one of the local chapters, right?

Ryan: Yes. The International Society of Arboriculture has local chapters. Throughout the entire world, I live up in Minnesota and now I'm president of the Minnesota Society of Arboriculture, which is our local state chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture.

Doug: Tell me a little bit about what that entails.

Ryan: As a local chapter, we run local events. Different workshops, so our certified arborists can get their continuing education credits. We host the chapter tree climbing competition. Every year we have the climbing competition for all the local arborists. Then the winners of those can go on to the International Society of Arboriculture, the international competition. Then just hosting other workshops, basic tree climbing workshops, and stuff like that, just to continue education for local arborists and get them involved with the industry.

Doug: I want to start with the competition. That sounds fun. It sounds hard. I watch those guys here at my place climbing the trees, it's like, man, you really have to be in good shape. Talk about the competition. How does it work?

Ryan: Myself, I have never competed, but I've been to a lot of them to watch and I admire the people that do compete. There's five different events that they have to go through and they all should simulate some sort of a work task. The work climb is the big one where they start at the top of the tree and then they have stations or bells dispersed throughout the tree. They have to climb out and hit each bell and do it safely and then get to the ground in a certain amount of time. There's the throw line competition where they have branches highlighted in the tree and they have to get a throw line over each branch and they're scored on the different difficulties of each branch.

There's the ascent event where they just climb up a rope as fast as I can, about, I think it's 50 feet. There's aerial rescue where they enact if someone is hurt in the tree. You have to go up and safely get the person out of the tree. They use a dummy. They don't have a real-life person up in the tree, but get them to the ground safely in a certain amount of time. Then there is the ascent event where it's a different ascent event or blade speed climb, sorry, is what the other one is called, where they climb up the tree and have someone pulling the slack in the rope, and then just scurry up the tree as fast as they can.

Doug: Is that a young man's game?

Ryan: No, there's people all ages that do it. One of the coolest things about Minnesota and other chapters and other competitions that I've heard is, you don't have to be the best of the best to be in the competition. They encourage newer climbers to be a part of it. It's a great community and everyone's there to help everyone. It's just more of an experience than anything. There's maybe just a handful of people who are really competing to win. Then the rest are there to learn and have a lot of fun.

Doug: Tell me a little bit about continuing education, because as a host of this podcast, it seems every few months, something new comes down the line that an arborist is telling me about or has learned about. In nature, things change and certainly, techniques change over the years too.

Ryan: Yes, absolutely. Things are changing all the time in our industry. Way back in the day in the '60s and '70s, and before that, they would put concrete in trees and cavities and have nice brickwork. They've learned that that's really not a good thing. Just making sure people are staying on top of new techniques and there's research going on all the time and making sure, as an arborist, we know the most recent research and the best applications for trees.

Doug: What is the latest pest that you are concerned with? The next one that's coming your way.

Ryan: Right now in Minnesota, emerald ash borer is really in our face. We're at that peak of the highest population where you see dead ash trees all over the place and the metro area and it's really expanding outside of there. Emerald ash borer is something that we're really dealing with right now. It's hard to look outside of that because it's really in our face. That's the biggest thing for us right now.

Doug: As that pest was headed your way, I'm sure that's part of the learning process, right?

Ryan: Yes, absolutely. We were a little bit fortunate to see it in other regions like Ohio and Chicago and stuff like that, where they dealt with it. in Minnesota, we were fortunate to have the-- where we're at now, be delayed quite a few years because it was first found here in 2009. In other communities where it was found, once it's first found within a few years, that population really ramps up. We were able to delay it quite a while before it really is to the point where it is now, where we had trees being treated to help protect it and all that stuff. We can get ahead of it rather than getting behind it.

Doug: I ask this question a lot to arborists. As somebody who works with trees every day, talk a little bit about the devastation of a pest like emerald ash borer because it came through here in Pittsburgh and basically there are barely any ash trees left. I think it was a little bit newer, and so we didn't really know what to do until it was maybe too late. As somebody who works with trees every day, what does it mean to you to have to deal with something like this coming through?

Ryan: Ash trees are one of the most commonly, or were one of the most commonly planted trees in municipalities after Dutch elm disease came through, just because it's a tree that can pretty much grow anywhere. Up until emerald ash borer, there wasn't any issues with the tree. Seeing just where our office is, it's a industrial area and there's tons of ash everywhere. We have been treating the trees right in front of our office, but the whole area, all of the other ash are gone. Now it's just big open lawns that used to be nice, big shaded trees. It's pretty devastating on that front, just seeing trees gone everywhere and a blank slate.

Also just dealing with homeowners who have ash trees and they decided not to treat them and just the financial impact on them of having to spend thousands of dollars to remove their trees because they're dead. I know we tried to preach doing treatments to help protect your trees ahead of time and people were like, "I don't want to pay a couple hundred dollars every year or every two years." Now they're having to spend a couple thousand dollars removing their trees.

Doug: There's ISA-certified arborist, but there's also other certifications, right?

Ryan: Yes. The certified arborist, again, is the entry-level certification just to show that you're knowledgeable in tree care and how to properly care for trees. Then there's specialty ones. There's utility line clearance arborist for the folks that do utility line clearance to show that they know how to properly work around utility wires. There's a municipal specialist for city foresters and stuff like that. There's a tree climber specialist which is more focused on the actual physical tree climbing. Then there is the tree risk assessment qualification as well, just to assess trees that might be potentially hazardous and identifying how to care for them.

Then the last one is the board-certified master arborist, which I obtained a few years ago. You have to have multiple years of experience and it's a point system where you have to be in the industry quite a while before you can sit and take that exam.

Doug: Tell me a little bit about what that entails to become that board-certified master arborist and why did you go for it? Was it something that like, "Man, this is going to be awesome"?

Ryan: For me, it was just a personal goal of mine to obtain that certification more than anything. To sit for the exam, like I said, they have a point system where you have to be a certified arborist for so many years, you have to have so many CEUs that you've done, and then different education and stuff like that. You can't just sit and take the exam as soon as you get your certified arborist, you have to wait a few years. It's very broad, quite a bit more in-depth than just the basic certified arborist exam. Very detailed and talks about different treatments for trees across the country and stuff like that, not just where you're locally at.

Doug: Tell me about some of the positive things about your job. I think this is one of the best things about being an arborist, being able to go to a client's house, and basically, in many cases, save their trees.

Ryan: It's really rewarding being able to help someone who doesn't really know about their trees, but they want to do the best thing they can for their trees, because they love the big old tree in their yard, or even their brand new tree that they just planted, and they want to make sure it's healthy. I really enjoy educating people about their trees and the proper treatments of trees. Personally, I really enjoy and get most gratified out of visiting a client that has a perfectly healthy tree, and we don't need to do anything for that tree because they're expecting us to be out there. Especially in a sales role at the time, they're expecting like, "How much is this going to cost?"

"No, your tree is perfectly fine. Give me a call, and I'll come back out and take a look at it." Some of those are some of the best ones.

Doug: Ryan, I'm going to leave it right there. That's a great way to end it. I want to thank you so much for spending time with me and teaching me all about ISA-certified arborists. As I've been doing this podcast, I've learned so much from arborists and certainly learned a lot today. Thanks again.

Ryan: Thank you, Doug.

Doug: Do yourself a favor, folks. Never let anyone but an ISA-certified arborist touch your trees. Trust me on that one. Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees Podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Do me a favor, subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss an episode. If you've got an idea for a show, maybe a comment, send us an email to podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S@D-A-V-E-Y.com. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees Podcast, trees are the answer.

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