Tree planting is sound strategy for city’s long-term benefit

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on November 30, 2017.

Residents of smaller communities are quick to say they live where life makes sense and where a sense of community is not taken for granted.

Those in prairie towns, we say with much pride, are in it for the long haul despite hard winters, hot summers, drought and all manner of unusual and harsh weather.

Such an outlook should be easily expanded to encompass the current state of the trees in our community, where there is no better time than right away to address the situation.

In Medicine Hat it’s feared they are being knocked down faster than they’re being planted.

Even once bushy areas of the southeast Hill are looking sparse after windstorms in 2015 and last October toppled huge evergreens and poplars.

Long avenues in Crescent Heights and Crestwood were also hit hard. Berm rights-of-way along the river communities sliced across cottonwood groves.

Younger communities are just getting started, relatively speaking, turning bare land into mature communities.

The News building on Dunmore Road lost four huge blue spruce trees this fall when winds gusted, thankfully without other property damage or injury.

Age, as well, is taking its share. Like all of us, trees have a lifespan. And, like all of us, they will all fall down eventually.

It’s hard to fault a homeowner who, after a 120- km/h wind, surveys the trees on their property and decides they’d rather take it down now, when healthy, rather than risk a surprise.

Ironically, trees actually help guard against wind. And there’s no cheaper air-conditioning than the shade of a lovely tree.

There’s no shortage of benefits from trees.

In the city’s most mature communities, looming beauties are reaching their end, and it seems few younger, smaller trees are already in place to — pardon the pun — step in to fill the void.

The City of Medicine Hat is in the midst of a more aggressive tree-planting program in its parks and public lands in order to bolster what’s called the urban forest.

Private land and homeowners should be leading this initiative rather than following government’s lead.

It’s sad to think some home- or business owners would think ‘why bother’ or ‘not worth the hassle’ when it comes to shading the blistering sun or generally making the landscape a little more amenable.

Hatters have been spoiled in the foliage department.

An initiative of early city fathers was to plant thousands of trees to beautify the burgeoning city — showing the virility of the soil and an area smack in the middle of the semi-arid Palliser triangle.

For a century we’ve been living with the benefits that can be lost without proper attention.

Think of the area between here and Brooks and you begin to get an idea the exposed landscape that could be returned to Medicine Hat without care and renewal of trees throughout the city.

Eventually every tree will fall down. That’s a fact of life, and it’s prudent to remove it before it does.

However a smart strategy, the long strategy, is to plan decades in advance to replace the wonderful, albeit mature trees that adorn our city.

Plant a tree to replace those lost this year.

The smart, proud Hatter will also plant soon to replace those lost five, 10 and 20 years from now.

That’s the mark of a thoughtful, strong, and resilient community, and it just makes sense.

(Collin Gallant is a News reporter. To comment on this and other editorials, go to https://www.medicinehatnews.com/opinions.)

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