What is happening to our trees?

by Lori Bradley

In her captivating short story “What a Girl Knows About Trees” Somerset writer Kathryn Kulpa shares her love for our largest form of vertical vegetation. “Trees are your friends. They won’t let you fall,” she writes. “A girl’s mother told her this once and the girl never forgot it, and never was afraid to climb to the tallest tops and look out past hedgy borders dividing yard from yard, high enough to see the ocean, or, on foggy days, at least the neighbor’s swimming pool.”

My parents also nurtured a crop of old apple orchard trees in our backyard where my siblings and most of the neighborhood children gathered to play – climbing into the flowers in the midst of hordes of humming bees in the spring and launching apple wars with the mucky, fermenting fruit that covered the ground in late fall. It was bittersweet play, though. My mother was sure the people who were going to buy our house would cut down the apple trees – and she was right – but sweet memories of that small orchard accompany me into adulthood.

Like the new residents of our house, many people are cavalier about trees. People still cut through vegetation with abandon when a new warehouse is needed near the highway, or a housing development takes the place of farmland. Decorative but invasive species are planted for natural fencing, or for beauty, then quickly take over and destroy native plants. Humans have always treated trees as a convenience, an annoyance, or purely as a valued construction material.

Lately though, with warmer weather leaving stands of skeletal bare trees or trees showing yearround browning and wilted leaves throughout the South Coast, people are starting to wonder what is happening to the landscape and express anxiety about the changes to beloved places. Proximity to the ocean seems to hasten the changes that are taking place across Massachusetts, and it can be psychologically and ecologically devastating to watch favorite tree varieties die off and leave forests looking thin and forlorn. Tree damage to homes is becoming more prevalent and some homeowners opt to cut favorite trees rather than risk an accident. Sadly, some of the iconic New England trees such as Blue Spruce, Sugar Maple, and Copper Beech are particularly environmentally stressed and beginning to die out.

Green investments

With more people starting to appreciate the intrinsic value of trees, Massachusetts initiated several programs to save or replace them in 2023, especially targeting urban areas like Fall River that suffer most from increased heat as the aging tree canopy collapses. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service announced a onebillion-dollar investment in projects that restore trees and green spaces in urban areas. Funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Forest Service is investing in improving tree cover in urban, suburban, and rural areas nationwide. The USDA shares the reasoning behind their commitment to this initiative on their website: “Studies show that communities with access to trees and green spaces are associated with improved health outcomes, reduced crime, lower average temperatures, and an influx of other kinds of investments and new economic opportunities.”

Fall River is a recipient of a onemillion-dollar grant for a project called the Urban Tree Canopy Expansion Initiative. Populations most vulnerable to climate change are targeted to improve shade and green spaces in crowded urban neighborhoods, and to provide incentives for public stewardship and careers in environmental fields.

Massachusetts state-sponsored initiatives to help foster tree growth and climate resilience include the Massachusetts Forest Stewardship Plan, through which licensed foresters work with private landowners to improve and maintain landscapes and forests with a goal of developing a ten-year forest management and sustainability plan. With drought conditions in 2022 increasing forest fires that threatened bordering towns in 2022, Massachusetts Forest Service designated approximately two million dollars to forest health improvement, including programs that increase resistance and resilience of trees and forests to mitigate and adapt to climate change, improve woodland ecosystems and biodiversity, increase the tree canopy, and provide new forest-management jobs.

Increased governmental spending and new projects are encouraging, but the battle is difficult and not one that forest scientists entirely understand as the climate of coastal Massachusetts rapidly begins to resemble that of North Carolina. Many foresters suggest planting new vegetation that is native to the southern states and potentially more resistant to a future of rising temperatures and extreme weather events in New England.

The list of climate-induced tree stressors is many including increasing invasive pests and diseases such as Asian long-horned beetle, oak wilt, and Beech leaf disease, which in 2023 threatens some of the state’s most iconic trees such as the beloved 100-year-old Beech in the town of Swampscott that recently succumbed to the new disease.

Additional threats include changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, increased ice storms, hurricanes, and drought conditions which stress trees and lead to decline. Even as new trees are being planted in urban areas, air pollution is a major detriment to their growth by damaging leaves and interfering with photosynthesis. Soil degradation and water pollution due to human activity and building construction can lead to tree decline. And some trees are just plain old and dying off. Many of the maples and oaks prevalent in

South Coast cities were planted at the turn of the 20th century and are reaching their end of their lifecycles. Forest professionals advise replanting with climate-resistant trees that will significantly change the look and feeling of our forests, streets, and parks, which can result in a type of collective mourning for the loss of sense of place, which according to Psychology Today is called “ecological mourning.” It is considered by therapists to be a new and unique form of grief. The best way for people to become resistant to this sense of grief is to take action. There are plenty of local incentives, like the Urban Tree Canopy Expansion Initiative in Fall River, through which to find a community of activists. There is also hope in programs like the Massachusetts Legacy Tree Program which celebrates and highlights iconic Massachusetts trees. Many of the trees on the 2023 Legacy List are Beech trees, including the magnificent, spreading, deep-red Beeches in Buttonwood Park and Clasky Common Park in New Bedford. Hopefully, increased attention to these valuable trees will help them resist the ravages of Beech leaf wilt for the time being, but warming temperatures will continue to bring new blights. It will take everincreasing energy and efforts of the scientific community, government agencies, and citizens to keep our forest canopy providing us with essential shade, clean air, beauty, and wonder in the future.