The Importance of Urban Trees

 

I have always (even when I was a child) been inspired by trees out in the forest, especially the giant sequoia trees in the Sierra Nevada mountains near the town where I grew up. In contrast, urban trees seemed much less important, especially since many of them are horticulturally altered versions of tree species that are not native to the area. Urban parks and woodlots offer shade and peace in cities, but compared to the canyonlike buildings around them, they seem to be of little importance. A park cannot compare with the grandeur of a forest.

I just finished reading a book by Thomas Brail, The Man who Saved the Trees (L’Homme qui sauvait les arbres; Arthaud 2022). He became alarmed at the many thousands of trees (mostly planes, which we call sycamores) that were being chopped down in cities all across France. He is an expert tree climber, part of his work as an arborist. He climbed into a sycamore tree in Paris, right across from the office of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, which was one of many trees slated to be cut down. (Can you imagine such a department in American government?) He stayed there for 28 days, until the Ministry decided to reconsider whether to save the trees. He admitted that, sometimes, it is necessary to cut down a tree, but many urban trees were being cut down to widen sidewalks and make them sunny. But during hot weather, direct sun is not something you want. And the trees provided many other ecological services to the city and its people and its ecosystems.

Brail correctly gambled that no government agency would cut down a tree that had someone in it; and there would be no point in cutting down the other trees, since the one remaining tree would be in the way of “development.” What he did not count on was how many supporters he got, from social media and from news coverage: sometimes sixty people would gather under his tree, and there were thousands of supporters around France. He even got a visit from the most famous French actress, Juliette Binoche.

But why urban trees? Is it not more important to save forests? Many oak and beech woodlands are still being cut down to make way for conifer plantations. This is what I thought until I put myself inside the mind of Thomas Brail.

It is true that a forest is more ecologically significant than a park. But on a tree-by-tree basis, the urban forest (the park) is more important. Urban trees provide benefits otherwise almost absent from the cities, and offer them directly to more people. It is not just how much oxygen they produce, or how much carbon dioxide they absorb, but where they are doing it. Having one less tree in a forest might not have as much impact as having one less tree shading a sidewalk.

And urban trees keep the natural world squarely in the field of attention of people who might not otherwise give a thought to the natural world. My thought is that urban trees are the missionaries of the tree world into the artificial human world.

Thomas Brail does not live in trees anymore. Nor does he say you have to. What he does and wants you to do is to eat less processed food, and more food from a garden; and to get rid of television, while instead looking for inspiration in the world of Nature. Perhaps most importantly in his work, he remains calm in the face of confrontation. He wants the forces of destruction to be the ones to get angry, thus making them seem to be stupid (ils ont l’air idiot).