Deforestation When you see the word, deforestation, you think of the Amazon River Basin in Brazil or the Congo River Basin in Africa, and you’re right on target. These huge, tropical rainforests are sometimes called the lungs of the earth, and make no bones about it, they are extremely important. Their loss would be catastrophic, but they are in grave danger. A few decades back our family went with a church building team from El Dorado First Baptist Church and Three Creeks Baptist Church to central Brazil. The final leg of the journey was flying from the town from Manus, Brazil in a regional carrier. We were flying over dense rainforest all the way to our destination, and I was sitting upfront almost by the co-plot, when I nudged the co-pilot and pointed toward the line of black clouds. “Thunderstorms?” I questioned “Just smoke from cattle ranchers burning the forest,” he replied. Yes, that was several years back, but deforestation is still taking place in Brazil. The recent environment summit in Scotland called for that practice to be eliminated, and Brazil has agreed. However, based on the President of Brazil’s pro-clearcutting actions over the past several years, few people expect him to hold to the agreement. However, deforestation is not just happening in the tropical rainforests, it is occurring every day in most cities and towns in the “Natural” State. Let me give you some examples from El Dorado. We don’t have a landscaping or tree ordinance in our town, so you can do just about anything with a piece of your property, if it pertains to trees or landscaping. Almost all of our parking lots are as blank as you can get them. Of course, there have been several studies that have compared landscaped parking lots with trees to parking lots without them, and the landscaped lots had 25% more customers than the non-landscaped lots. Dan Burder, a Senior Urban Designer, estimates that over its life a single downtown street tree has $90,000 in direct benefits, and on a residential street with trees, houses sell for an average of 10% more than a street without trees. It must be that El Dorado and most Arkansas cities don’t understand basic economics because we whack away as if trees just get in the way. Now let’s step on a few more toes. El Dorado has a relatively new high school, which is a gorgeous, well-planned series of inter-connected buildings. However, the site, which is a large significant piece of property, has been scraped off. It has one tree remaining in the front of the school. Hugh Goodwin Elementary, our award winning Blue Ribbon School, has just cut down a large pin oak tree, and over trimmed two others. But I will give them credit for planting one tree in the front. However, they need to add not cut down. But it seems the education community is unaware of the value of trees, since they cut down three sidewalk street trees in front of the headquarter building, which were trees I planted. Now let me put my money where my mouth is, which is planting trees, and if you want to join me jump in. I will make a $500 donation to the El Dorado School System, if the school will use it to plant trees on the new high school property. If you donate fifty dollars, it will be enough to plant a tree on other school properties, and it can be for any street tree on any public property in the state. Just send me your commitment of how many dollars you will donate, and where, and I will make sure those dollars buy trees. We must develop a pro-tree attitude, and plant a tree in every spot possible, and refrain from clearing the land when we develop. If you remove a significant tree from your property, you reduce its value, and that’s not environmentalist Richard speaking, but realtors and the IRS. What could be more natural to a state, which calls itself “The Natural State” than trees? Of course the history of our state is rampant with deforestation as the great east Arkansas flood plain of the Mississippi was essentially clear-cut and the huge swamps drained, and yes I know that made the fertile land available for farming, but instead of 95% deforestation couldn’t we have saved more? My uncle lived and farmed in the boot heel of Missouri, and he commented that at least 25% of the land cleared was less than quality farm land. I know when we hear about things such as deforestation, while China and India are still constructing coal fired electrical generating plants, we think we’re isolated from those practices, and if China, India, and Brazil would get their act together, we could get global warming under control. However, the problem is worldwide, and the cumulative destruction of forests whether they were cut down and eliminated a hundred years ago or last year created the problem. The earth has lost a huge percentage of its tree cover, and it continues to lose trees at an alarming rate. A study a few years back estimated 8 trees are cut down for every 1 planted. What the world needs now is more trees, and it needs an attitude that trees are a vital part of our lives, and are keys to a healthy planet. I’ve touched on attitude several times in previous columns, and of course, that’s the way it is with most things. Cutting down trees and not replacing them is an attitude problem. If we get right down to it, cutting down trees, littering the highway, not using plastic bags, and adding waste to our stream and oceans, are all part of the same problem. If we are going to restore trees to our towns and cities we must have the inner desire to consider trees an integral part of our environment. As I drive around and look at our town and others in the state, I look with a critical eye, and I see the empty lots and front yards where a tree would make a difference. However, we do have some excellent examples of landscaping with trees here in El Dorado. The next time you are downtown, look at the block north of the courthouse where Murphy USA, the former Murphy Oil Building, and the Newton Museum are located. What if the rest of our town looked even close to the way that block looks? We’re gaining on the trees and landscaping in downtown El Dorado (over 1000 downtown trees have been planted). And of course our town is better off because of the trees. Our downtown won a national award for the best Main Street Downtown, and one of the factors the judges commented on was the great tree canopy. Now if we can just keep our Mayor and Public Works Director from whacking them down, maybe our downtown can continue to be an example of how urban tree planting can beautify a downtown as well as cut utility cost. Just think; if everyone who reads this column would plant one tree what a difference it would make. Plant a tree!