My specific experience as a LA, includes my involvement in ecosystem restoration projects (stream restoration), green infrastructure and stormwater management related projects. These are all very technical design related services. Covering all aspects of assessment, design, permitting, and construction. It all has a direct impact on the community, safety, health and welfare, as well as the environment.

• Landscape architects directly impact public health, safety, and welfare. Licensure is the most appropriate form of regulation to ensure that the public is adequately protected.

• Licensure of landscape architects ensures that professionals are qualified by virtue of their education, experience, and examination. 

• Licensure of landscape architects ensures that untrained individuals are prevented from engaging in professional practice that substantially (or significantly) impacts public health, safety and welfare. Licensed landscape architects fulfill educational training and examination requirements that prepare professionals to protect the public from both physical and monetary harm.

• Licensure of landscape architects is necessary to keep the profession on an equal footing with its related licensed design professions, architecture and engineering. This equality enables landscape architects to lead projects, form certain business partnerships, and serve as principals in multidisciplinary firms.

• Licensure for one profession, and certification, registration, or no regulation for the other, can cause confusion in the marketplace and may be perceived by the consumer as an endorsement of the skill and competence of one profession over the other. Where the professions overlap, it provides a state-sanctioned advantage for one profession over the other. This destroys the competitive, free market in which design professionals compete.