Kansas City, Mo. ? Thousands of trees need to be planted across the city to replace those lost in an ice storm last year, a Kansas City forester says.

“We’ve really just scratched the surface of what we need to replant,” said Forest Decker, an outgoing forestry manager for Kansas City’s street tree program.

Decker, who is moving to Platte County’s parks program, said tree plantings on public rights of way along streets or in parks usually were small.

Often the plantings are done in partnership with neighborhood associations.

“Usually, we’ve planted 10 trees here and 20 there,” he said.

Several hundred thousand trees may be needed to replace not only the trees that were damaged by ice in January 2002, foresters say, but also older, diseased and undesirable trees.

The storm that swept across Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri temporarily knocked out power to about a million homes, caused more than $50 million in damage and led to federal disaster declarations in 123 counties.

A tight budget has prevented any large-scale tree replacement programs. Instead, city crews are providing labor and expertise while grants, neighborhood groups or individuals are paying for most of the trees.