Hardworking Trees Deserve Protection From the Ax

Environmental Commission recounts how trees make life better

With another Presidents’ Day approaching, local schoolchildren will once again hear the story about how an honest young George Washington admitted to felling his father’s prized cherry tree. But beyond the story’s obvious moral, the Mansfield Township Environmental Commission hopes residents will also think about why that tree—and any tree--might have been so precious to George’s dad.

Trees are among the hardest working natural resources in our community. They enhance our quality of life with their beauty and provide habitat for birds and other creatures. But trees also contribute a significant amount of the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere and they play a major role in keeping the environment clean.

The roots of trees help keep streams and rivers clean by preventing soil erosion. Soil washed away by stormwater and deposited in waterways causes a buildup of sediment that can harm aquatic organisms and make rivers, lakes and harbors more susceptible to flooding.

According to the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC), construction sites have been shown to produce as much as 250 times the normal amount of soil erosion when builders clear-cut all the trees and bulldoze the entire lot instead of leaving trees standing and reducing the amount of soil disturbance.

Drinking water supplies also benefit from trees. Their leafy crowns break the impact of falling rain so that more water has time to evaporate or drip gradually onto the soil, replenishing groundwater supplies, instead of racing to the nearest storm sewer.

Trees also scrub ozone, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants from the air we breathe and in some areas where landfills or manufacturing activities have polluted the ground or surrounding wetlands, cleanup projects sometimes call for planting certain types of trees that help absorb the toxins through a process called phytoremediation.

Trees fight global warming

With growing concerns about climate change, Mansfield Township residents have a simple way to fight global warming in their own back yards just by planting and protecting trees. Large trees on the south, east and west sides of a house can reduce energy use for air conditioning, cutting summer electricity usage by 5 to 10 percent. In the winter, deciduous trees drop their leaves so that the sun’s rays help warm the house, reducing heating fuel consumption. As a result, trees help reduce a household’s carbon footprint all year long.

The town’s 6-member Environmental Commission has been working on several other projects to help inform residents and advise municipal government on ways to conserve natural resources and protect the environment in Mansfield Township.

The Environmental Commission meets monthly and recently completed an Environmental Resource Inventory ("ERI") that will help guide environmentally friendly land use planning and decisions.