Tree Speech

TIME has gotten around to reporting on the rapid deforestation of American cities. In Why Cities are Uprooting Trees, they note that:

All this hits the environment hard, starting with air quality. Every tree that’s subtracted from a city’s ecosystem means some particulate pollution that should have been filtered out remains.

According to the story:

In the past few decades, Washington has lost half its tree cover; San Diego’s is off about a quarter; the cover in cities in Michigan, North Carolina and Florida has fallen to about 27% of what it once was; Chicago and Philadelphia are just 16%. “Urban deforestation,” says Ed Macie, an urban specialist with the U.S. Forest Service in Atlanta, “compares with what’s going on in the world’s rain forests.”

They conclude that:

For now, the most immediate answer is less the planting strategy than the preservation one, something that can best be achieved by curbing sprawl and downsizing our taste for too-big homes. For people who plan cities as well as those who live there, it’s important to remember that most of the time, sidewalks and sycamores are equally important.

It’s a point that bears repeating to our Mayor and City Council. Preservation of remaining tree canopy is our only hope for keeping San Antonio healthy.

One of our members sent along this photo of a Cottonwood in South Bexar County.

Cottonwood tree along Calaveras Creek near 181 south

Just last year, developers were lobbying aggressively to get “trash trees” like the Cottonwood eliminated from the tree ordinance. (See Tall, majestic cottonwoods, sycamores could face the ax ). Had they been successful, this tree and millions of others would not be protected, or even exist, as far as the tree ordinance is concerned.

They claimed the trees don’t live long enough to be of any value to a homeowner. They also pointed out that Helotes doesn’t protect the trees under its ordinance.

I can only assume that developers had a big hand in writing the Helotes ordinance. And I would ask them to consider the following: When planting a new tree, one may rightfully argue for choosing one species over another. But using the same criteria to argue for destruction of old, established trees is wrong.