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If you pass the U.S. Post Office on South Main Street in Wilkes-Barre regularly, and if you believe (rightly) that trees serve a vital purpose in an urban environment, then the sight of large honey locusts being sliced steadily into stumps earlier this week evoked a bit of shock and sadness.
“They are cutting down perfectly healthy trees,” Penn State Urban Forester Vincent J. Cotrone told our tree-loving feature reporter Mary Therese Biebel. “I could see if the trees were dying or creating a risk,” he added, “but these were perfectly healthy. And we need the greenery.”
Beibel later saw some of the hewed remains, including a few logs that were a bit hollow (others were solid). She sent photos to Cotrone, who said it was not a justification for downing the locusts. “We call that heart rot,” he explained. “A tree can be like a hollow pipe and still have strength. We build bridges with hollow pipes, and they’re strong. To give you an example, a tree with a 30-inch diameter can lose 15 inches of diameter and it’s only lost 15% of its strength.” He then estimated the trees in the post office parking lot — before being felled — had “10 or 20 good years ahead of them.”
Biebel didn’t initially get any explanation for the downing of the trees. After the story ran, she did get a response. The trees had been deemed a risk to cars and pedestrians in the lot.
Such logic may sound moderately reasonable, but we don’t find it satisfying. The trees had stood for decades without presenting any danger, to our recollection. And if some branches appeared a risk, they could have been trimmed while keeping the stately trees intact, offering shade, greenery in summer and spectacular coloring in fall. Oh, and there’s that vitally useful habit of trees purifying the air in cities where car traffic spews exhaust nearly incessantly.
This is just the latest in a series of trees takens down in the heart of the Diamond City. Several majestic trees were felled in Public Square in recent years. A batch of trees at the corner of East South Street and South Washington came down not too long ago. And more than 20 large oak trees that had lined Pennsylvania Boulevard for decades were dispatched with striking speed in 2020, to make way for the massive new home of the Luzerne County Transportation Authority.
We have long suspected some of those oaks could have been preserved with minor adjustments to plans for fencing in front of the new LCTA building, much as we suspect the post office trees could have been retained through appropriate pruning. And we remain concerned that, as Cotrone pointed out, people remove trees without considering all the options — and all they offer.
“Too often people make the quick decision to cut down a tree without thinking about the repercussions of what they’re losing,” he noted. “The shade, the temperature moderation we’ve needed in the summer and will probably need even more in the future.”
In cities, trees have also been shown to slow traffic, and to improve the moods of those who live or work there. In short, as the urban forester put it, “Trees make cities more livable.”
Which is one reason that in September the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced $1.13 billion for 385 tree-planting projects across the country, and the USDA’s Forest Service separately allocated $250 million for urban tree canopies and access to nature. Cotrone noted the irony of the post office trees coming down amid a push to plant more.
But even when they are planted, it takes decades for saplings to reach the size and value of what they replace.
“We can’t glue them back together,” Cotrone said. “What’s gone is gone.”
True. But we can call attention to the issue, and hope that more people, governments and businesses give long pause and due consideration to what we lose before they cut down healthy trees.
– Times Leader