- Habitat Loss
- Changes in CO2 Levels
- Erosion and Soil Damage
- Natural Disaster Risk
- Aesthetic Concerns
Clear Cutting: Boon to Builders, Disaster for the Environment
Every day on my commute I drive by a brand new development of well-appointed and pleasingly designed houses. I often glance over at the yards of these houses while shaking my head in a “What’s wrong with this picture?” kind of way. And what’s wrong is that there are no trees around the houses: they look almost forlorn and out of proper context just as if they had been airlifted down from a helicopter.
It’s no secret that this is how developers build these days. It’s called clearcutting. Like so many other things today, it’s all about efficiency and the bottom line. Stately and beautiful trees that have been around for 50 or 100 years are sacrificed so that the builder can make some additional profit. To those of us who care about trees, preserving green spaces, and restoring the environment, it’s a travesty.
How can these kinds of practices change? As with many things, it starts with education. Ruth Seward, the Executive Director of the Worcester Tree Initiative, says that she gets a lot of questions about this topic: “One thing that people have been asking me is: do trees prevent flooding? The short answer is yes.”, Ruth noted.
Clear-cutting makes little aesthetic or environmental sense. Mature trees serve many purposes. They are a source of oxygen, add beauty to the environment. and clean our increasingly polluted air. Pollution, in fact, was recently identified by a prominent global health organization as a major source of health problems.
Mature trees have importantenvironmental functions. They act as anchors for the soil with their extensive root systems, thereby preventing erosion and soil damage. In addition, on rainy days, the leaves slow down the rate that water falls to the ground. These characteristics help prevent the kind of flooding increasingly seen in over-developed areas.
According to the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI), clear-cutting can have a large number of deleterious effects including but not limited to: