Urban growth
Heritage trees battle climate change
There is a single best answer to the question: “What can we do about climate change?” And that is: plant trees.
A study was published in Science magazine in July that revealed new data suggesting that if there was “one solution” to climate change, it would be to plant one trillion trees.
The geographic area for a trillion trees covers an area roughly the size of continental U.S. and Russia combined. This “one-solution” idea, obviously, only underscores the importance of trees among a long list of necessary measures.
It is remarkable how much we have learned about the functions of trees in recent years.
We now know that they talk to one another - communicating bad news when an insect or disease infestation arrives in a tree community. They support one another in ways that were previously unimagined, through interconnected roots and symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi.
Environmentally, we know this for certain: Our oldest and largest trees are performing yeoman’s service when it comes to producing oxygen, capturing carbon and filtering toxins out of rainwater. The big trees in your neighbourhood are working for you today. The young ones are growing into the environmental workhorses of the next generation.
So, why aren’t we doing more to protect heritage trees?
The good news: There is a heritage tree program in Ontario, managed by Forests Ontario in partnership with the Urban Forests Council.
To sign up a tree for consideration, go to the Forests Ontario website, select the community engagement page and then click on “in the spotlight.”
The qualifications are not complicated, as stated on the application: “Tree (applied for) must be associated with a historic person or event or be growing on historically significant land.”
Once you have applied for heritage tree designation, a trained professional will visit the tree and provide a recommendation to the heritage tree panel at Forests Ontario.
Eric Davies, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s faculty of forestry, specializes in heritage trees of Ontario. He says he’s “not a big fan” of the current model, “due to their focus on cultural heritage versus ecological heritage.”
He explains that if “the focus of the heritage tree program is only on cultural heritage, I think it does a disservice, in the sense that it educates people to think that the only thing that makes a tree worth saving or recognizing is the cultural value of it.”
“What about all of the fascinating and valuable ecological heritage?”
Davies reminds us that trees sustain our ecosystems and us. “The more we recognize and celebrate the beauty and value of our outstanding ecological heritage, the better.”
We think it is important to focus on one more aspect that is missing from the current program: It has no legal teeth. If a tree has “heritage designation,” it is no more protected than any other tree in the urban forest. It could be viewed as “celebrated and designated,” but that’s about it.
We think it is time for Ontario - indeed Canada - to create a designation for old, useful trees that are both culturally and ecologically significant.
This designation would halt, or at least slow down, the cutting down and disposing of a tree until it had finished its useful life. It would draw attention to the culture, maintenance and significance of old trees. Through education, the designation would help all of us understand how to nurture and protect heritage trees.
In the U.K., the Ancient Tree Forum designates trees that are not only valued and cherished. The forum has gone further: It’s created a designation there for (in order, from youngest to oldest) champion, notable, heritage, veteran and ancient trees.
If you find the whole notion of heritage trees a bit daunting, have a look at the website for the Ancient Tree Forum in Britain, where it is leaps and pole-vaults ahead of us in this regard. When you understand the forum’s approach, it is easier to digest what can be done in our own backyards.