What Can We Give Trees?

by Amy Walker

Human life has always been interconnected with trees. Four million years ago our ancestors lived in trees, all Earth’s people have religious and cultural stories about trees. Yet there is so much we do not know about them, and too often we take trees for granted and fail to appreciate our reliance on them. From our perspective, trees are great providers. They exhale oxygen, which we breathe; provide cooling shade; shelter and habitat; air purification and noise mitigation, they grow fruits; nuts; spices; saps; as well as needles and leaves which we like to eat and use as medicines. We turn their fibres into paper, baskets, clothing and other useful items; not to mention - they are made out of wood! …and we LOVE making all kinds of structures, from furniture and musical instruments to buildings and boats out of their strong and resonant, wonderful

ONLY 150 wood! Trees have given YEARS AGO, A us so much and we have taken much more than RAINFOREST we needed. What can we

OCCUPIED give them in return? THE LAND WE

NOW CALL VANCOUVER.

Extractivist economies count trees as objects to be turned into monetary value and seldom consider the needs of trees and what we should be offering in exchange. Our treatment of trees ranges from reverent to violent and doesn’t dwell often in the vicinity of equality. With tree bodies we have built civilizations, empires and fortunes. Perhaps,

as Potawatami citizen, scientist and writer, Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses in her work, it is time for us to consider our responsibilities to the trees and act in a way that gives back to them. Only in the last few decades have scientists begun to understand how trees communicate and share resources with each other. Forest ecologist and author of Finding the Mother Tree, Suzanne Simard used radioactive gases to track the trading of carbon for nutrients between different tree species through mycelial networks. She and others have learned that trees are healthier in collective and family groups, much like we are. Again, trees contributing to our wealth: showing us the value of care and interconnectedness. Only 150 years ago, a rainforest occupied the land we now call Vancouver. This forest was populated by massive Douglas Fir, Cedar and Hemlock as well as others of 40 to 50 species native to this region. Imagine our little neighbourhood, not very long ago, covered in 100-metre high giants whose canopies welcomed ravens, eagles, herons and songbirds while the forest floor was a home to deer, bears, cougars, wolves, coyotes, and seasonally, on the shoreline, a Coast Salish peoples’ village site called Kumkumlay. Perhaps we still can connect to the land through the stories of the Host Nations, the Musqueam, Squamish and TsleilWaututh peoples and through a few surviving very large trees that remain dotted around the Lower Mainland: vancouversbigtrees.com

ACCORDING TO THE CITY OF VANCOUVER’S OPEN DATA PORTAL, THE CITY’S STREET TREE COUNT IS OVER 151,000; THERE ARE 2,691 STREET TREES IN STRATHCONA (BETWEEN CLARK DRIVE AND MAIN STREET, FROM THE WATERFRONT TO GREAT NORTHERN WAY). TODAY, OUR CITY IS SUPPORTED BY A DIVERSE ‘URBAN FOREST’ MADE UP OF HUNDREDS OF TREE SPECIES INTRODUCED FROM ALL OVER THE GLOBE. YOU CAN LOOK UP INDIVIDUAL STREET TREES INCLUDING THE SPECIES, DATE PLANTED AND SIZE (DATA IS ENTERED SPORADICALLY AND MAY BE A FEW YEARS OLD). THIS RESOURCE SHOWS MOST OF THE ON-STREET TREES IN THE CARE OF THE VANCOUVER PARK BOARD, WHILE THE GREATER PART OF THE URBAN FOREST IS ACTUALLY FOUND ON PRIVATE LAND.

www.opendata.vancouver.ca/ explore/dataset/street-trees

Magnolias photo by Esther Rausenberg