Urban forestry, urban myth

Ecology is more than a photo-op: planting trees in Point Pleasant Park, Halifax

By: Parker Barss Donham

HALIFAX: It was an inspirational image: dozens of high school students fanning out into Point Pleasant Park, planting seedlings to replace trees cut down by federal pest managers and blown down by winter storms.
  After all the palaver about the brown spruce longhorn beetle (BSLB) - Was it a really recent invader? Did it really threaten the park or other forests? Could it really be contained? - someone was finally doing something constructive.
  HRM (Halifax Regional Municipality) councillors and parks department bureaucrats fell all over themselves congratulating the young environmentalists on setting a positive example for their bickering elders.
 

"One of the few points of agreement among all sides in the BSLB battle is that years of overuse and abuse have severely degraded Point Pleasant Park's environment"

  There was only one problem with this picture: the tree planting effort is likely to be a waste of time and effort, as the pols and bureaucrats who rushed to applaud the students either knew, or should have known.
  One of the few points of agreement among all sides in the BSLB battle is that years of overuse and abuse have severely degraded Point Pleasant Park's environment. Repeated logging through two centuries has robbed it of organic matter. Hundreds of thousands of pedestrians have compacted its depleted soil. Industrial pollution has taken a further toll.
  Planting trees in Point Pleasant Park without first addressing the ecological impediments to the restoration of its forest makes about as much sense as stocking the Sydney Tar Ponds with oyster spat before cleaning it up.
  Like the delusional arguments of the environmental poseurs who call themselves Friends of Point Pleasant Park, the notion that poking a few thousand seedlings into holes in the park's wasted ground will make everything well again is an urban myth.
  For members of the BSLB Task Force, which has generally had the scientific high ground in the debate, to encourage and support this effort is at best patronizing and at worst cynical.
  Of course it's good that students take an interest in the park's welfare, even better that they prefer taking action to making speeches. By all means involve them in planning the park's future.
  But do them the favour of treating their concerns honestly. Don't reinforce the cartoon cut-out version of nature that informs the Friends' knee-jerk opposition to control of an exotic, potentially destructive species. Credit the students with enough interest and intelligence to explore the issue in all its complexity.
  Restoring the park will not be easy, quick, or inexpensive. It will take knowledge, planning, and money. Tree planting is more likely to be a final step than a first one. Along the way, restoration planners will discover that many of the practices that have degraded the park have entrenched constituencies who will defend them vigorously.
  Well informed students could be a powerful political ally in efforts to secure government and private money for this huge task.
  A good first step for interested students would be to read Anthony Ricciardi's article, "Lessons From An Ecological Crisis," in Biotype, an on-line publication of the Dalhousie Biology Department. A Dalhousie ecologist who specializes in species invasions, Ricciardi eviscerates the myriad myths promoted by the Friends at their web site.
  If the ill-informed uproar over the precautionary removal of trees that are dying anyway finally focuses the community's attention on a long-term plan to rehabilitate the park, it will have been worth it. Moving the debate in that direction would be a worthy task for interested students to set themselves upon.

Copyright 2001 by Parker Barss Donham. All rights reserved. (pdonham@fox.nstn.ca).

Parker Barss Donham lives in Kempt Head, Nova Scotia and covers Nova Scotia politics in Cape Breton and Halifax.

Posted: May 28, 2001

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