Trees & Utilities 2026 was a busy and valuable week, bringing more than 1,200 arborists, foresters, utility vegetation managers and technology providers to Portland, Oregon, from September 22 to 24. Across the sessions and conversations on the show floor, a consistent set of themes emerged. Wildfire risk is spreading well beyond the West, utilities are rethinking fixed trimming cycles, and data is only as valuable as the speed at which it reaches the field.
At the same time, utilities are bringing more of their network data together, and the workload facing vegetation teams continues to outpace the people available to deliver it.
Here are our five takeaways from the week, and what we think they mean for the utilities we work with.
1. Wildfire risk is no longer a West Coast problem
Wildfire was a much bigger part of the vegetation management conversation this year, and not only among western utilities. Utilities in regions that have rarely considered themselves wildfire-prone are now assessing their exposure. Policy is moving the same way: according to the SEPA and PNNL wildfire policy tracker, 2025 saw more state wildfire legislation than the previous decade combined. Eight states, including Texas, Kansas and Minnesota, passed utility wildfire legislation for the first time.
That is changing how vegetation risk is assessed. The question is shifting from “is this tree inside the clearance zone?” to “how much risk does this span carry?” Answering it means combining tree condition, species and fall-in potential, fuel loading, weather and terrain with the criticality of the circuit itself.
What it means for utilities: clearance compliance remains the baseline, but it is no longer the whole picture. As more states link liability protections to approved wildfire mitigation plans, utilities need a defensible, network-wide view of where vegetation risk sits, and a clear record of how it was addressed.
2. Fixed cycles are giving way to condition-based programs
Many utilities still manage distribution vegetation on a fixed rotation, revisiting each circuit every few years regardless of need. The industry is now moving steadily toward condition-based programs, where work is scheduled according to the actual state of the vegetation and the risk it poses.
Getting there depends on better visibility. Many programs still rely heavily on boots-on-the-ground assessments, which expose workers to hazards, are costly to scale and can produce inconsistent results between assessors. Condition-based management needs a view of conditions across the whole network, refreshed often enough to track growth and consistent enough to compare circuits fairly. For many utilities, the next question is what this means for their LiDAR programs: how often to capture, at what scale, and how to turn each capture into a ranked work plan.
3. Speed from data to decision is what counts
Utilities were noticeably less interested in simply having good data, and more focused on how quickly it can become something operational: a prioritized set of locations that planners and crews can act on.
The pace of the work makes this unavoidable. Vegetation keeps growing, and storm and fire seasons arrive regardless of processing backlogs. Data that takes months to reach the people planning work loses much of its value, however accurate it is.
In our view, speed should not come at the expense of the right measurement. On transmission corridors in particular, NERC FAC-003 compliance and encroachment analysis depend on measured three-dimensional distances between vegetation and conductors, modeled under maximum sag and blowout conditions. Broader screening tools have their place, but they do not replace that measurement where it matters.
What it means for utilities: when evaluating data and analytics partners, look at time to actionable information alongside accuracy. The output should arrive ready to feed work management and GIS systems, and be precise enough for the decision it supports.
4. Separate datasets are becoming one picture of the network
Utilities are building much larger pools of network data. LiDAR, imagery, asset records, vegetation work history, inspection findings, outage data and weather have often sat in separate programs, owned by separate teams. Increasingly, they are being treated as parts of the same picture.
The real value comes from combining them and learning from them over time. Each new capture becomes more useful when it can be compared with the last to measure growth, linked to the assets and circuits it affects, and checked against what crews found in the field.
5. The workload is growing faster than the workforce
Workforce and skills came up repeatedly. Wildfire mitigation plans, reliability targets and grid expansion are all adding to the work utilities must deliver, and that work is growing faster than the number of qualified foresters, arborists and crews available to do it.
We expect this to keep pushing the industry toward better prioritization, technology and automation, as utilities look for ways to get more from the expertise they already have.
What it means for utilities: the role of technology is not to replace experienced foresters and arborists, but to point them to where their judgment matters most. Remote, objective assessment can screen the whole network, leaving field teams to focus on verification, complex decisions and the highest-risk locations rather than walking spans that turn out to need nothing.
Where the industry is heading
Taken together, these five shifts point in one direction. Vegetation management is becoming more targeted, more risk-based and more data-driven. With US utilities spending an estimated $6-8 billion a year on vegetation management, the pressure to show that this spend is directed where risk is highest will only grow.
This is the work NM Group has focused on for many years: network-scale LiDAR capture, vegetation and clearance analytics, and risk assessment that helps utilities decide where to act first. We left Portland with a clear sense that the industry is ready for the next step.
If you would like to discuss what these trends mean for your own program, get in touch with our team.