BY NEIL SILINS, BRANDON TREE WARDEN
Trees are beautiful to look at. Trees moderate temperatures, absorb excess ground water, and add oxygen to the air around them. They serve as habitat for wildlife (birds, small mammals, insects, reptiles, etc.) They reduce tensions and anxiety in subtle ways. There have been a number of studies comparing communities with and without trees. These studies indicate that having trees in a community provides a health benefit, an emotional benefit, and a social benefit. Perhaps surprisingly, the crime rates are lower in treed communities than in bare ones. They also add to property values where they are plentiful. So, just based on these criteria, there is a logical reason to control or prohibit unnecessary pruning and removal.
Trees are living organisms. They are subject to various threats and pathogens. Trees have a normal life span, different for each species and in different environments. If there are no other threats, they grow, mature, and eventually die. If you look at our trees, a lot are of pretty large diameter (trees are measured in diameter at breast height or DBH). This is an indication of age. Trees are also targets of lots of diseases and insect attacks. Elms, butternut, chestnut, and ash have been decimated over the last 75 years. Emerald ash borer gets closer to Brandon every year. Hemlock and maple have pathogens that are on the increase. As the world gets smaller, more invasive species will put our trees at increasing risk. And, whether you accept climate change or not, weather patterns are changing and so are the tree species best suited to thrive in Brandon. Our goal, then, as guardians of Brandon’s trees, should be to nurture the trees that we have and plan for the loss of those we’ve enjoyed over the years.
Vermont statutes require each town to appoint a tree warden, whose primary job is to prevent removal or unhealthy pruning of shade trees. This only covers keeping the healthy trees we currently have. Given the long life of most trees, and the length of time for them to grow to maturity, we need to do long-term planning when looking at our tree canopy.
There isn’t much we can do about most invasive species in a useful time frame – by the time we have a treatment that doesn’t cause more problems, the particular pathogen may have already pushed a species to extinction. And much of our magnificent tree stock is old and beginning to show its age.
Park Street in Brandon is a good example of an urban canopy. It has a lot of aging trees, and a few ash trees. Two years ago, some Park Street trees were dropping branches and the tree warden determined that the hazard they presented warranted removal. While no one can call Park Street “bare,” it doesn’t have the same feel as it did prior. And more Park Street trees will require removal soon.
It isn’t practical to replace the removed trees with similar-sized trees. While we’d get an instant canopy, the cost of larger trees is very high and the work has to be outsourced to tree companies. But, with foresight and planning, we can start a program to plant bare root to 2–3-year-old trees in places where they will be able to grow to replace the older, dying trees that have served us so well. And we need to vary the species we’re planting so we don’t have what’s called a monoculture – a whole community of predominantly one species. This is what happened where I used to live: American elms were the tree of choice, and they grew well until Dutch elm disease struck. Then nearly the entire canopy disappeared in a few short years. If we can develop a program of regularly planting a “critical number” of trees, and varying the species that we plant, we will always have a viable canopy of younger trees to replace those that “age out.”
In Brandon, the tree warden is voluntary, and currently limited to one person. Also, the project I’m inviting you to consider is outside the scope of a tree warden’s usual responsibilities. I would like to explore the idea of a Brandon Tree Committee. We’ve had Tree Committees before, and they’ve done good work. I’d like to gather people to work on inventory, locations, scheduling, selection, and budget criteria to develop a “fifty-year plan”. I’d like to start meeting discuss these and other issues. Please contact me by email at Brandontreewarden@gmail.com or through town offices. Everyone is welcomed.
