Tree Benefits
Trees provide significant social, environmental, and economic benefits.
Trees soothe us. They help calm us as individuals and reduce stress at work and on the road. They reduce the need for antidepressants in many individuals. The practice of “forest bathing” offers benefits similar to meditation.
Trees heal us. Urban trees decrease the rates of childhood asthma. Loss of trees to emerald ash borer has been associated with additional deaths from cardiovascular disease and lower respiratory disease. Residents of areas with the most greenery are three times as likely to be physically active and 40% less likely to be overweight or obese than residents in the least green settings. For children diagnosed with ADHD, the effect of walking through an urban park for twenty minutes is roughly equivalent to the peak effects of two typical ADHD medications.
Trees reduce crime. Studies find lower rates of crime around apartment complexes located close to green spaces than around similar housing units lacking the vegetation.
Urban trees provide habitat for wildlife. Many of us find joy in watching honey bees, squirrels, bluebirds, bald eagles, wood ducks, and other critters attracted to the habitat created by urban trees.
People shop more in places surrounded by living plants, including trees.
Trees, especially well-maintained mature trees, add to the value of residential properties. Selected trees planted in appropriate locations can reduce heating and cooling costs for homes and businesses.
Trees reduce stormwater runoff. For a community that has suffered from numerous floods, the potential of this particular benefit is tremendous.
Trees improve air quality. Leaves absorb carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and ozone. They release oxygen through the photosynthetic process. Leaves help filter dust and particulates from the air. Trees store carbon as they grow thus slowing the buildup of greenhouse gases.
Challenges and Blessings
Challenges
- Emerald Ash Borer – This non-native pest has killed most ash trees in the community. Although we have been replanting replacement trees as the ash are removed, it will be a long time before the young trees provide all the benefits we received from the mature trees.
- Floods – Recent floods have posed many challenges. Smaller trees have been tilted, or in some cases, washed away during floods. Trees of all sizes have been damaged by large debris pushed along by flood waters. Even mature trees along the river may slowly die due to root damage from water standing over their root zones for weeks at a time in 2018.
- Beaver – We knew that beaver lived in the Kickapoo River. And we knew that they occasionally chewed on the large aspen trees on the north side of Robb Park by the canoe landing. We didn’t expect that they would finally chew completely around those large trees and kill them. Or that they would come up the creek and fell a large crabapple that volunteers had just spent hours pruning. Or that long-standing flood waters would provide them with easy access to our young London planetrees which were too newly planted to sprout from the root system. In early April 2021 a beaver cut down one of the young tamarack trees along the Stump Dodger trail. We have put cages around the other tamaracks near the trail and the trees in Robb Park to protect them from beaver damage but during strong floods the cages do some tree damage themselves.
- Our Small Size – While many of us love this Village specifically because of its small-town qualities our size also poses some challenges. We have a smaller pool of people from which to draw volunteers. Although it seems to our volunteers that we order many trees each year, we don’t order enough to be able to purchase somewhat smaller trees from this country’s larger wholesale nurseries. Finding arborists willing to provide important services (such as EAB treatments) is more challenging both because our service needs may not provide a full day’s work and our distance from their bases is far.
Blessings
- Community Support – We are grateful for the financial and emotional support of this community and our funding agencies. The Village Board has made it possible for much urban forestry work to be accomplished here.
- Tree Board and Volunteers – The Tree Board (Craig Anderson, Beth Jensen, Kevin Murray, and Cindy Kohles) thoughtfully plan our work and then make good things happen.
- Diversified Plantings – We have been able to plant many different types of trees in the Village to help prevent the loss of a large portion of our canopy to any incoming pest or disease. Students putting together a collection of leaves will be able to find some unusual ones here!
- Grants – We give thanks to the WI Department of Natural Resources, Kickapoo Cultural Exchange, American Transmission Company LLC, the Crawford County Community Fund, and all the individual donors whose financial contributions have allowed us to accomplish so much in recent years.