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Thoughts on the Forest by Maurice LeCroy

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“A Thing Is Right When It Tends to Preserve the Integrity, Stability and Beauty of the Biotic Community.
It Is Wrong When It Tends Otherwise.”
Aldo Leopold

"If the biota, in the course of eons, has built something we like 
but do not understand, who...would discard the seemingly useless parts?  
To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949

  



In the Mason Mill Forest Watershed ...
.... along South Peachtree Creek, it is just a few trees, perhaps as few as a thousand, that  Dekalb County/PATH  is set to "demolish" at the end of this month. 

"Demolish" and  "grubbing" are  the words used in the Dekalb/PATH  site "plans".
With reference to these thousand trees, "planing to demolish" is inaccurate,
because there has been no environmental feasibility study, no tree count, no plan!

Commissioner Jeff Radar, accountable for PATH, was quoted in the AJC story of Feb 16, '08:
"I don't think that there's anyway to justify that statement about 1000 trees.
I would like for someone to show me their math." Who is accountable for knowing that math?

Dekalb County/PATH is set to begin demolishing 3.3 acres of trees in this watershed any time they please, they say, even without an environmental impact study.
How many trees will fall has been so irrelevant that they do not have a tree count, and ask the community to justify its estimates.  The community is willing to do that.

Meanwhile, how is it that Dekalb/PATH did not "do the math" as a part of the planning process, and does not  know now how many trees they will fell? 
How is it that Dekab County/PATH is so careless as to ignore these tree facts*:      
  • Trees help us breath by taking carbon dioxide out of the air and producing oxygen. Carbon dioxide, produced from burning fossil fuels, is the greenhouse gas most blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere and linked to global climate change. One acre of trees produces enough oxygen for 18 people to breathe each day and eliminates as much carbon dioxide from the air as is produced from driving a car 26,000 miles.
  • Tree root networks filter contaminants in soils producing clean water.
  • Trees prevent erosion by trapping soil that would otherwise become silt. Silt destroys fish eggs and other aquatic wildlife and makes rivers and streams shallower, causing more frequent and more severe flooding. Trees along streams also hold streambanks in place to protect against flooding.
  • In the Chamblee area, the loss of 44% of its tree cover has resulted in storm water runoff problems costing $129 million.
  • To meet state sewer standards, the City of Atlanta is spending $240 million to counter effects associated with the loss of tree canopy.
  • By creating shade, trees moderate temperatures both globally and in the micro-climates of cities and counties.
  • Tree loss in Atlanta and neighboring counties has resulted in urban "heat islands" with temperatures 3-10 degrees above the surrounding countryside. The hot weather dome over the Atlanta area has changed local weather patterns including reducing rain in some areas and increasing the intensity of thunderstorms in others.
  • "Heat islands," created by tree loss, also exponentially increase air pollutants. When pollutant chemicals are superheated by high air temperatures, they become more volatile and interact with each other to create ground level ozone which would not happen at lower temperatures. That is why Atlanta's most dangerous levels of air pollution occur in the summer.
  • 60% of Atlanta's natural tree cover has been removed over the last 20 years.
  • Metro Atlanta is loosing trees at the rate of 50 acres a day according to NASA.
  • The "State of Our Urban Forests" study recommended that healthy cities aim for a 40% tree cover (equivalent of 20 large trees per acre) to ensure their ecological, economic, and social sustainability.
  • Atlanta has an average tree cover of 27%, Boston has tree cover of 21.2, Austin 34%, Baltimore 31%, Milwaukee 18%, Chicago 11 percent, and New York City has 16.6 percent.
  • A recent survey by University of Georgia and Valdosta State University researchers shows that 85% percent of Georgians said they would approve some limits on private property rights if they were necessary to protect the environment.
         * http://www.arboratlanta.com/facts.html


 Regarding the thousand trees, quoting from the 1/18/08 AJC article, we read:

"Rader said the county will require approval by PATH and its landscape designers for the removal of any hardwood trees over six inches in diameter or pines over 12 inches."

Somehow I am not consoled that Dekalb County/PATH will require approval by PATH/Dekalb County for Dekalb County/PATH to do what it pleases. What it pleases is to clear a swath of up to 40' through portions this old growth forest, grading and clearing for heavy equipment access and for paving,  and drilling for concrete pilings for boardwalk, all in spite of lack of community buy in, to put it mildly.

Deforestation reflects  a very old conversation between the  civil and the wild, between the known and the mysterious, between the ruled and the unruly, between the urban/suburban dwellers, and the farmers and the lumberers and the miners and the wheelers of all sorts - between these always justified human interests and the forests.

On a global scale, this 3.3 acres is miniscule. Yet, tree by tree, millenia by millenia, the forests are falling.

DEFORESTATION* OF THE UNITED STATES
 *   Deforestation: Those practices or processes that result in the change of forested lands to non-forest uses. This is often cited as one of the major causes of the enhanced greenhouse effect.

Map Source:
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/deforest.html

One million dollars is the estimated initial monetary cost to deforest and construct and maintain concrete and boardwalk. A nature preserve with low impact foot trails and an educational component? Priceless. Our children's children's children will bless us.
Even now, within and around this forest, community is growing, thanks to its threat.


"If the biota, in the course of eons, has built something we like 
but do not understand, who...would discard the seemingly useless parts?  
To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949


"Once developed, a community is unable to replace or reclaim lush open spaces, mature hardwood forests, unique archaeological remains,
and healthy watersheds that safeguard our water supply. The environmental welfare and quality of life secured by protection of greenspace
help to stimulate the kind of economic development that ensures the long-term investment value of the County."
Dekalb County CEO Vernon Jones

Dear CEO Jones,

May it not be too much to ask that you act upon your word - else what is your legacy and our destiny?

I petition you to halt South Peachtree Creek Trail plans for Mason Mill Forest, the only large, untrammeled, old growth forest in metro Atlanta, until such plans reflect your words.

“Untrammeled. A key descriptor of wilderness in the Wilderness Act, untrammeled refers to the freedom of a landscape from the human attempt to intervene, alter, control, or manipulate natural conditions or processes to provide particular benefits.”— FWS Draft Wilderness Stewardship Policy, 2001

Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson,  father of sociobiology, popularised the concept of 'biophilia' - the 'love of life or living systems', or, the 'innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes'. He states, "To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained." 

These are the sensibilities called for as we consider the only untrammeled old growth forest in metro Atlanta.

It is a miscarriage of governance that  a concrete contractor, with no public accountability, with vision so limited  as to call this  "a NIMBY situation", is given  responsibility for this forest and empower to drive the SPCT project. Certainly such governance does not reflect the desires of the rapidly growing informed public, a public who hold you to your ideal and to your word, as  executor  of this county-public  owned forest.

The issue is not, as Ed MacBrayer frames it,  whether there has been "sufficient public outreach" to begin construction, though, from the community perspective,  there has not. The issue is that there has not been even an approximation of comprehensive community engagement in the design, much less the conception,  of this project. Opposition is growing in direct proportion with knowledge of the facts (as distinct from the cover stories). Beginning demolition will bring exponential awareness and opposition.

This is not yesterday's public, asleep in the back seat. This is a public awakening to the forest and to each other, a public informed by the forest and by each other, awakening, in rapidly growing numbers, to community and responsibility,  willing and determined to merge with governance, to step into the unknown and co-create a future in which humans find our place in accord with nature, in communion. 

I urge you to put your trust in this process, in yourself, and in your publicly expressed ideals, so that a new day may dawn in our community and in the untrammeled forest in our midst.

I urge you and those commissioned to serve with you to immediately halt or stop plans to develop Mason Mill Forest.

Yours in communion,  in communication,  and in community,

Maurice LeCroy 2172 Willivee Place  Decatur, GA 30033

CEO Vernon Jones did not respond to this letter