The trees of Greenwich are weeping. They cry for an end to the bureaucratic indifference and misplaced risk management that is behind their massacre. The utility companies are reimbursed for capital projects, so find it easier and more profitable to slaughter our trees en
masse; instead of applying thoughtful pruning. Now near every powerline in town lie silent stumps amidst drifting piles of sawdust. Along I-95 the state has logged with abandon. Our highway interchanges are denuded, and the leafy elegance that used to veil I-95 is pierced at great intervals. We all now must bear homely views of rusty tracks, hanging wires, riprap, and rear yards. MetroNorth has recently joined the annihilation too; clear-cutting old and gorgeous trees along the tracks from Old Greenwich to Byram. Even our own town too seems to have
shifted gears. Stately trees in parks and on streets that I’ve forever loved are now removed with rapidity, yet token replacements – if at all – hardly come with any reciprocal alacrity.
Greenwich’s trees do a lot more than shade our streets and bring a verdant beauty to our neighborhoods. Shading our yards, streets and public spaces, they reduce summer’s heat. For our children they provide a place to climb and play, serving as imaginary proxies for distant worlds. Stately trees block noise and obscure unwanted sights, they eclipse the trains ripping through our community, the semis on the highway, our neighbor’s garbage cans. Their roots hold the soil beside our roads, railroad tracks, and on every bank or shore. Without them, our
hillsides would crumble and rivulets of rain turn into streams brown with runoff. Trees are the world’s best carbon sinks. Through photosynthesis, carbon is removed from the earth’s atmosphere and then held and sequestered in vegetation and our soils. Trees are the optimal entity in this process, gigantic active bollards to climate change. Trees are also the aesthetic icons of our town. Great tree allees earmark Greenwich’s style, along with wonderful natural corridors of oak, beech and maple that line our roads. Trees make Greenwich the suburban town the world aspires to. Their presence dramatically affects real estate values. And naturally,
our trees sway gracefully in the wind, charm us with their colors, and serve as homes to our birds, squirrels, and a myriad of other wonderful creatures.
There are likely valid engineering reasons for each arboreal onslaught, from clearcutting on the dam in Pomerance to sheering the woods behind Riverside School, but the sum has recently reached epidemic proportions. Many of our streets have signs asking you to drive as if your children lived there. So too our trees deserve such ethics. Each tree removal project is usually designed by someone far away, in Hartford, or down in MTA headquarters in NYC. They are nice hard-working folks, but indifferent to our neighborhoods. Their performance is gauged by completion dates and engineered metrics, not the savaged remnants of beauty in our neighborhoods. Our town is largely being clear-cut by distant and detached bureaucrats; so it is time for our own to stand up; from Fred to Ned. I don’t believe any of our electeds would allow what is happening to take place in their own yards. Yet, this is happening in our public streets, public places, town parks, the very heart and soul of Greenwich. We need some backbone, we need some pushback. For I have never seen a poem as lovely as a tree….
Alexander Brash is a retired conservationist who has lived in Riverside for 25 years. After a Masters in Forest Science from Yale, and PhD work in community ecology at Rutgers, he was the Chief NYC Park Ranger for nearly twenty years, then NE Regional Director for the National Parks Conservation Association, and finally President of the Connecticut Audubon Society. He was also on the Greenwich Conservation Commission for nearly 15 years.
