Tree canopies are an essential tool for climate change mitigation and adaptation, primarily due to their ability to store and sequester atmospheric carbon. They have a number of inherently appealing co-benefits that make them a key element of green infrastructure in urban environments. As these co-benefits are not necessarily coterminous with climate change mitigation and adaptation, urban planning is considered a venue for "mainstreaming" climate policy. Although the benefits of tree canopies seem to be commonsense, there are structural issues identifiable in climate governance systems that make tree-positive policy difficult to implement – the most egregious of which is the neoliberal state of climate governance that emphasizes the action of private and voluntary actors. Ethnographic methodology is incredibly useful in tracing the webs of policy actors that constitute these networks and their inadequacies, and anthropological knowledge is useful in unpacking the assumptions that inform policy. Anthropologists can contribute tremendously in governmental adaptation planning efforts due to their place-based understandings of vulnerability and resilience in urban populations, and their ability to engage with policy- and decision-makers by promoting science-policy integration. Charlotte, North Carolina has a strong history of arboreal appreciation and conservation, and yet has not itself escaped the issue of tree loss; the City of Charlotte has amended its previously established goal of tree canopy coverage multiple times, which suggests there are barriers to reaching this goal. Data collected from eleven interviews with tree canopy professionals, advocates, and government officials highlighted some of the challenges, practical limitations, and place-specific issues around tree canopy protection and restoration in the Charlotte area. The objective of this study is to understand the networks of policy actors in Charlotte’s tree canopy efforts, with the underlying purpose of investigating why these efforts have struggled to meet the 50% canopy coverage goal and what could be done to strengthen these networks and tree operations to make the goal more achievable. My findings show that Charlotte’s city government has inadequate human and financial resources to address the tree issue, that tree welfare in Charlotte is overly reliant on the agency of private landowners and enterprise, and that local universities should become more involved in tree-positive policy engagement and give the issue more research focus.