Tag: trees

B.C. trees feel cli­mate stress

Experts warn years of repeated drought, heat raise risk of fall­ing branches

Experts say prolonged dry spells can wear down even a Douglas fir, which is usually very droughtresistant.

This article was written by Nono Shen and was published in the Toronto Star on August 24, 2025.

Some­times it hap­pens without any more warn­ing than the sound of crack­ing.

A tree physiolo­gist said that sev­eral years of repeated drought in Brit­ish Columbia mixed with heat stress increased the like­li­hood of branches break­ing off, and this could even hap­pen on a “per­fectly calm day” without any breeze.

The con­sequences can be tra­gic — on July 31, a mother and her five­month­old son were killed by a fall­ing tree on the beach at Cum­ber­land Lake Park camp­ground on Van­couver Island.

Then on Aug. 10, a woman was badly injured when part of a large tree fell on her at Pipers Lagoon in Nanaimo, also on the island.

Peter Con­stabel, a pro­fessor in the bio­logy depart­ment at the Uni­versity of Vic­toria, said he had seen pho­tos of that tree, and he thought it looked like there was some rot inside it.

“It’s the drought that spe­cific­ally causes this, and some­how it stresses the tree and drops the branch, or the branch falls. If you get cumu­lat­ive droughts, of course, it’s gonna weaken the tree over­all,” said Con­stabel, who spe­cial­izes in the tree health.

Brit­ish Columbia has suffered years of repeated drought, although con­di­tions are cur­rently rated nor­mal on Van­couver Island, which received heavy rain last week­end.

Con­stabel said he had seen branches of maple trees and oak trees fall­ing off on the Uni­versity of Vic­toria cam­pus, even on a wind­less day.

“It’s just hot and dry for a long time, and the branch just breaks off. It’s really kind of coun­ter­in­tu­it­ive,” said Con­stabel, adding that the water in the cell walls in the wood helps sta­bil­ize a weakened tree.

Simon Fraser Uni­versity bio­lo­gical sci­ences pro­fessor Jim Matt­s­son said he had recently wit­nessed big branches fall from a Douglas fir on Burn­aby Moun­tain.

“If someone had been hit by that, that could be quite ser­i­ous,” said Matt­s­son, adding that a pro­longed period of drought can wear down even a Douglas fir, which is usu­ally very drought­res­ist­ant.

Dry spells can leave trees in a weakened state, Matt­s­son said, redu­cing pho­to­syn­thesis and growth, cut­ting their energy or sugar reserves, and lower­ing pro­duc­tion of chem­ical defences.

All of these can cause a chain reac­tion increas­ing trees’ sus­cept­ib­il­ity to insects and fungal dis­eases, caus­ing trees to rot inside, weaken and poten­tially topple over, said Matt­s­son. “When you have sea­sons of repeated drought, and people may not even notice that they have sev­eral years of drought stress, they will drop the leaves, they drop the needles, and so on.”

Matt­s­son has fre­quently vis­ited Van­couver Island for his research and said west­ern red cedars that are com­mon on the island are quite sus­cept­ible to drought, with roots fairly close to the sur­face.

As sum­mer get hot­ter, more stress is added to these trees.

“So, that can be enough to kill them in a year or two,” said Matt­s­son, “Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean that they’re going to fall over right away. They usu­ally have to be weakened by rot, primar­ily insects and fungal rot.”

Con­stabel said maple trees and west­ern cedar are not very drought­tol­er­ant, and hikers should be cau­tious while passing them. Trees in an urban set­ting are par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­able, as they are more likely to be exposed to the sun, with soil com­pacted and their root sys­tems might not be as healthy as trees in a nat­ural envir­on­ment.

“That makes it harder for the tree to stay healthy, and also could poten­tially weaken the tree, then it would drop a branch in a drought,” said Con­stabel.

B.C. order pro­tect­ing old growth exten­ded

RCMP prob­ing reports of deadly tree spik­ing

This article was written by Marcy Nicholson of the Associated Press and was published in the Toronto Star on January 31, 2025.

VICTORIA The Brit­ish Columbia gov­ern­ment has approved a legal order to extend tem­por­ary pro­tec­tions to an old­ growth forest on Van­couver Island even as the min­is­ter of forests acknow­ledged the RCMP are invest­ig­at­ing reports of tree spik­ing in the area.

Ravi Par­mar said he was informed of the reports last week, call­ing the news of such van­dal­ism “incred­ibly alarm­ing.”

Spikes are typ­ic­ally metal and can injure or even kill a per­son who attempts to cut down or mill the tree.

“I want to be very crys­tal clear to Brit­ish Columbi­ans, any­one who goes out and spikes a tree, puts the lives of forestry work­ers on the line, risks their safety, poten­tial death each and every day, I want to con­demn these actions,” Par­mar told report­ers.

The min­is­ter said spik­ing is a “dan­ger­ous crim­inal activ­ity” that puts health and safety of forestry work­ers at risk, adding the province imme­di­ately noti­fied both the forestry licensee and the local First Nation.

“It is out­rageous that indi­vidu­als and the groups they are con­nec­ted to feel that caus­ing ser­i­ous injury to work­ers fur­thers their cause,” said Brian But­ler, pres­id­ent of United Steel­work­ers Local 1­1937.

The Fairy Creek area received inter­na­tional atten­tion in recent years due to protests after log­ging per­mits were gran­ted in 2020. This allowed the cut­ting of tim­ber, includ­ing old­growth trees, in areas in and around the Fairy Creek water­shed.

Almost 1,200 oppon­ents of old­growth log­ging were arres­ted at Fairy Creek for defy­ing court orders pre­vent­ing inter­fer­ence with har­vest­ing oper­a­tions.

The pro­vin­cial gov­ern­ment’s announce­ment that it gran­ted a log­ging defer­ral exten­sion to Sept. 30, 2026, applies to the order first issued in 2021.

It fol­lows the first exten­sion that expires Sat­urday and came at the request of the Pacheedaht First Nation, whose ter­rit­or­ies encom­pass the entire water­shed.

Tree advocates in Los Angeles wait to see extent of damage

This article was written by Tammy Webber and Dorany Pineda, and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 13, 2025.

People across Los Angeles have worked for years to increase the number of trees that shade the pavement, provide a respite for people and even clean some air pollution. They’ve confronted increasing drought, bad tree-trimming and objections from some neighbours who resent the leaves and sap. Now they wonder what January’s fires have done to their efforts.

Bryan Vejar, associate director of community forestry for TreePeople, an environmental non-profit that works to expand tree equity across Los Angeles, said city arborists have shown him “sobering” photographs of large trees knocked onto homes and parkways from the same powerful winds that sent fires out of control. Other images show scorched tree canopies.

The Santa Ana winds damaged trees in TreePeople’s primary focus areas of South Los Angeles, Watts and Inglewood, historically underserved neighbourhoods with less shade.

The air is still so bad that field crews cannot yet go out and work safely. When they do, he said, they expect to to find young trees snapped, broken or dried out.

New trees are vulnerable, and volunteers often have to go out and water them for the first few years.

“Events like this can greatly increase our mortality rates,” Mr. Vejar said.

Past fires and extreme winds have torn off many limbs and taken down trees, especially ones planted in narrow strips of land where there isn’t room for much soil, Mr. Vejar said.

When it’s safe to conduct field assessments, urban tree experts will go out to inspect, re-stake and retie trees toppled by winds, and remove and replace those that were lost.

Replanting trees in burned neighbourhoods is harder now because of climate change, said Will Berelson, a professor at USC’s Department of Earth Sciences and researcher with the university’s Urban Trees Initiative. Even though many of the city’s mature trees might only be 30 or 40 years old, they “started growing at times when it was not as hot and didn’t have these kinds of wet and dry fluctuations that we seem to be seeing now,” he said.

Some experts see tree losses as an opportunity to continue teaching Los Angeles residents about the place they live and what plants are the best fit, not necessarily the iconic ones of Hollywood movies. They would like to replace nonnative species like palms – which are more closely related to grasses – with trees that provide shade and can withstand extreme heat and drought.

Aaron Thomas, director of urban forestry at the environmental non-profit North East Trees, said trees such as the coast live oak are a good option. They are native to the region and are fire resilient – in fact, they need to burn to reproduce, he said. Mr. Thomas, who grew up in Altadena, has family members who lost homes to the Eaton Fire.

His brother’s home burned, but the five coast live oaks in his backyard survived. For him it’s another reminder that cities need to think about how we rebuild in general and how we reforest communities with native flora: “That’s what we need to do.”

We don’t need to cut down majestic old trees for the holidays

This opinion was written by Jennifer Cole and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 2, 2024.

A nun takes a photo of the 100-foot tree in St. Peter’s Square last month. A petition with 50,000 signatures had called on Pope Francis to stop the ‘execution’ of the tree from Italy’s Trentino province.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – except if you are an 80-year-old evergreen tree. Every year cities and towns worldwide go to great lengths to choose a majestic tree to become the centrepiece of their festivities. This year, however, the tradition is being questioned.

In Italy, 50,000 people signed a petition calling on Pope Francis to stop the “execution” of a live 100-foot evergreen tree from Trentino province destined for the Vatican. They said killing the tree, which is now at St. Peter’s Square, was unnecessary and would deprive the local environment of its ecological benefits. However, local officials have said that if the tree hadn’t gone to the Vatican, it would have been cut to comply with EU forestry management practices.

Old stately trees, as the Italian protesters rightly point out, are vital parts of the ecosystem. They are self-sustaining habitats for birds and small animals. The cones and needles of evergreen trees are a source of winter sustenance for wildlife. Living trees absorb carbon – the amount varies depending on the type of tree and its size. The Tree Council of Ireland suggests that a 10-year-old evergreen absorbs 14 kilograms of carbon dioxide a year. Yet, despite these arguments, the practice of felling mature trees for the sake of holiday magic continues.

On Nov. 7, a 74-foot Norway spruce was cut down, placed on a flatbed truck and made the journey from West Stockbridge, Mass., to New York’s Rockefeller Center. On Nov. 12, a similar tree arrived in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square – a majestic white spruce from Bancroft, Ont. It was decorated with more than 500 ornaments, with a big reveal happening this past weekend.

Some cities have been rethinking the tradition. In France, the city of Bordeaux discontinued the practice in 2020, much to the chagrin of citizens. A poll showed that 79 per cent of people in France disapproved, yet the mayor’s deputy defended the decision, citing costs for a tree that would end up in the trash. Cost also played a role in Edmonton, when in 2022 the Edmonton Downtown Business Association said paying for a large real tree didn’t make sense any more.

In Vancouver, the giant tree in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery is a 76-foot artificial cone. No one complains. A study released by the American Christmas Tree Association suggests that artificial trees have a more favourable effect on the environment if used for at least five years.

In fairness, there is some environmental benefit from the sacrificial trees. Toronto’s trees have traditionally been mulched and blended into the soil for future trees to grow from. The tree at Rockefeller Center is handed over to Habitat for Humanity and its wood is used to build homes for families. And yes, new trees will be planted. In Canada, the federal government has recognized the critical role of trees and in 2021, it launched an ambitious initiative to plant two billion trees by 2031, although the plan is behind target. Sadly, though, it will take many decades for those seedlings to come close to the majesty of the ones cut down for this year’s holiday festivities.

When all is said and done, the loss of one tree is enormously sad, but it’s what that loss represents that makes it devastating. The Earth is facing a dual crisis of rapid climate change and unprecedented biodiversity loss. The Copernicus Climate Change Service reports that in 2024, the planet is virtually certain to exceed the 1.5 C limit above preindustrial warming agreed to in the Paris Agreement. A recent UN report on biodiversity estimates as many as one million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction. This includes trees.

The controversy over axing these guardians of nature, as Italian protesters prove, stirs strong emotions. Cutting down one tree is not the end of the world. But it does raise questions about the precedent set when a beautiful, old tree is sacrificed – stripped of its environmental service – all for a fleeting moment of holiday magic. Sure, it looks nice, but it’s hard to argue that it’s necessary. More likely, it’s just another example of the avarice that has got humanity into a tangled mess in the first place, leaving the stewardship of Planet Earth as an afterthought.