When your neighbor wants to remove thriving trees (use this).
We caught a post on a community tree forum recently. The poster was asking for help: she was distressed to learn that her new neighbors were plotting to remove healthy trees on their property. How to talk them out of it?
It got us thinking: we need to put out a Smart Feller Tree Works-approved response that anyone can use in this situation. As our region attracts new residents, it's a situation that's going to crop up more and more.
Below is the original posted plea with our suggested response, written as a "Dear Neighbor" letter to adapt, share, copy, paste, email...
Sidenote: we love this individual's plea for its 1) tree awareness and care! 2) active compassion for working with and possibly trying to change this neighbor's mind. Let's change some minds.
Remember: you are not alone in caring for trees. When you need an arborist to help make your case, you can find International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborists in your area by searching on treesaregood.org.)
“I have new neighbors who recently moved here from out of state. In our first conversation, they shared that they plan to remove some trees on their property “so they can have a view.” I’m pretty sure I had a visible reaction to that statement, but I hoped for the best and had fingers crossed for minimal impact.
The tree company came in the past week to mark the trees they want removed and there are SO many. It is breaking my heart to walk by their home and see all these beautiful, healthy mature trees wrapped in pink tape, just waiting to be senselessly killed.”
(If you’re ever find yourself in the case above, below is a response you can use, adapt, mail, email, etc.!)
Dear Neighbor,
Hi. We want you to know that we feel strongly about preserving healthy trees young and old in our neighborhood, and that you live in a community that values this. We hope you’ll hear us out and reconsider removal of your trees.
Trees are our number one defense against a warming world and, here in Asheville, we’re on a disturbing trend toward canopy loss. Every tree counts. This is the reality of the world we all live in. Tree consciousness is part of living here in Western North Carolina. It may feel uncomfortable or intrusive, but we welcome you into it.
Removing trees in order to see a “better” view of our wonderful mountains (and living trees in the distance) will cause stress to the plant and soil communities on your property. Many of these stresses will go unnoticed, but they are still there even if we aren't paying attention. Removing trees on our mountain slopes disrupts soil systems that are working in many ways to keep that slope from sliding into the French Broad. Just look to California, where trees on slopes are lost to wildfires, and they must live with landslides as a result. Your trees will lose their leaves in winter; why not keep them and celebrate the beautiful recurring winter view?
When you remove trees from your property, you negatively impact neighboring trees that remain. Trees live in correspondence with each other, in community air and soil. With the loss of a tree, its neighbors who remain lose a partner with which to share and gain resources, causing stress. The remaining canopies will also be exposed to wind loading that they are not used to experiencing, making them more vulnerable in the world.
Some folks will say, “oh, I’ll just replant.” Even if the new tree is planted correctly and it survives, it will take decades and decades to replace the carbon sequestering that your mature tree once held. If you allow a mature tree to be cut in its prime, it won’t be able to pass its lessons to the younger trees around it. Replacing mature trees with a cultivated nursery product that only knows fertilizer, grass, and full sun is not an in-kind replacement.
Three more things to note about your trees and their resilience. Even if your trees have a fungal infection, they may be treatable by one of the many certified arborists in town. If your trees have decay or a nasty wound, have a certified arborist examine how the tree is responding to it: there are many ways trees signal how they're coping just fine. And there is likely plenty an arborist can do to help its recovery. If a tree is “leaning,” no need to panic. It is most likely growing toward the sunlight it needs and poses no great risk of failure if it has had a healthy habitat. Living with trees rather than against them is possible and should be celebrated.
We are all drawn to live in these beautiful tree-filled mountains because we want to walk in the woods. We want to live in the woods. Living “in the woods” comes with responsibility to preserve rather than strip our mountains. We’re at a dangerous point here in our region where development will only increase. Stripping our land of trees will only hurt the place we love and call home.
Thank you for loving this place, thank you for listening, thank you for being open to hearing us out. Could we have a conversation, or have a certified arborist out for a conversation about it all before you make your decision?
Your neighbor
PS. You can also find a list of qualified, accredited arborists by searching our area, here.
How a tree is killed.
On my way home from work, I pass by a Red Bud every day. Last May, it looked as if a new sewer line was being installed. Over the span of ten days, I watched.
I should say that before the heavy equipment even arrived, this Red Bud was pretty stressed, with a sparse canopy and a buried root flare, most likely due to the growing in of a grass lawn. As this tree grew out, the grass pushed up, and over time the root flare, which needs to breathe like all other parts of the plant, was covered. Seeing it through the seasons, I noticed there had been little to no nutrient cycling: no mulch, leaves, etc. for the soil microbiome to eat. Grasses are big competitors with trees: some grasses pump out chemicals to make the soil more conducive to their growth, and those growing conditions are detrimental to most trees. But! This tree had life all the way to the tips of its branches! A good sign, and it had put on several inches of new growth in the past year. Trees do their best with what they’ve got. Just like us.
The first day of May work they excavated a trench above the Red Bud, piling the soil.
The second day is when most of the trauma came to this tree. They spread out the clay-based soil from the excavation all over the Red Bud's root system. This tree's root system, like all trees, can extend well beyond the width of its canopy, and most of the roots are within the first 18" of soil. Any driving, digging, or grade changes should occur at a minimum of the diameter of the trunk at breast-height times five away from the tree on all sides. Adding soil, any amount, to the top of the ground in this area will inhibit the gas exchange that root systems, as well as the wood wide web, need to survive.
Over the next several days, they dug closer and closer to the Red Bud. As the machine approached the tree, the soil was compacted. This will further inhibit gas exchange, as well as decreass pore space in the soil. No oxygen, less space for macroinvertebrates, and no room for water. The first pass of large equipment does most of the compaction, so even one trip alone will damage the tree. The soil will eventually turn anaerobic, and most of the major fungal infections that kill trees in urban environments thrive in anaerobic conditions. Root death will occur, in addition to the death of the millions of microorganisms, fungi, bacteria, and arthropods that need oxygen to survive.
Then this machine compacted the soil even more. Compacted soils cannot absorb water: water will run off the top of this lawn very much like a paved lot. Note the absence of a root flare at the bottom of the tree. Piling this much soil (or mulch) at the tree's root flare will cause fungal infections, girdling roots, suffocating yet another part of the tree that needs to breathe. They have added several inches on top of what was already a buried root flare. At this point I was also not sure if they trenched directly next to the tree.
The finished product above, strawed and seeded. Somehow on their egress they broke a large limb. Removing limbs (intentionally or not) from traumatized trees will further exacerbate the problem. Trees store energy in their limbs and leaves, energy that could be used to cope with stress if the limbs were left alone. Removing limbs opens live tissue wounds that the tree will need to contend with before antagonistic fungi enter the trunk tissue. On large trees, removing limbs affects the way the tree responds to wind loading.
Large trees can take years, even decades to show signs of stress after the damaging event. This small Red Bud, already stressed as it was, has significantly declined in the months since the excavation.
The first two pictures above were taken in August and the last in September. You do not need to take a test from the International Society of Arboriculture to tell you that this tree should not look like this at this point. Even now, in mid-September, go look at a Red Bud: you should find full canopies barely showing signs of fall color. The speed at which this canopy thinned surprised me, as trees store energy in their roots and branches to sustain themselves through troubling times (drought, heat, pandemics, human folly...) — but they can take only so much. This is just one example of what happens to trees all over Asheville, all over the world, every day.
If it this tree was a large White Oak, "it would be fine" for years and years and years, showing a full canopy, green leaves, and acorns underfoot. But trauma is trauma and at some point the tree would run out of energy, unable to cope with the added soil, buried root flare, and anaerobic conditions. The canopy would thin, dead limbs would appear in full sunlight, and mushrooms would fruit at its base, and then an arborist would finally be called.
That call could be too late. The time to call the arborist is before equipment arrives, before someone without tree knowledge or training assures you they will work around the tree and keep it safe, that "It'll be fine!" Take it from this Red Bud. It’s not fine at all.