The N&R’s Jim Schlosser had an interesting article in yesterday’s edition on Greensboro urban forester Mike Cusimano, the man who balances development and widespread panic over the loss of trees:
Cusimano, a 55-year-old woodsman with a hearty laugh and good tan, is realistic. He weeps not at the loss of every weeping willow. He knows trees must be sacrificed at times.
And he doesn’t look at developers as evildoers, although confrontations occur, and he has cited several for tree ordinance violations.
If no trees were cut, Greensboro wouldn’t be growing and prospering. The key is balance…….
Cusimano isn’t a certified arborist but a registered forester. The professions overlap but basically a forester manages large stands of trees. An arborist is more concerned with the health of individual trees.
Some consider the title “urban forester” an oxymoron. A recent News & Record story reported the city lost 18 percent of its tree canopy between 1986 and 2000. In 1986, 32 percent of the tree canopy remained.
A new survey, expected to begin in September and using more advanced photo technology, will determine what’s happened since then.
Robert Bardon, extension specialist at N.C. State, said despite heavy tree loss in the United States, forests are more abundant now than in colonial times when European settlers did massive cuttings.
Reminds me of a dire warning a friend gave me a few years ago: “Bush is going to pave the forest, man.”
