Back in April, California Governor Jerry Brown issued his mandate ordering Californians to cut their water consumption by 25 percent, saying, “People should realize we are in a new era. The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”
Since that time, verdant green lawns have turned brown, and in extreme cases, been replaced by fake grass or desert sand. But California’s resilient populous has taken up the gauntlet, and state officials announced Wednesday that water consumption for the month of May was down an impressive 29 percent.
So water use has been controlled, and that is the good news. But the drought continues to impact the Golden State in serious ways, and none of them is good. One of the biggest losers with the drought is the flora of the state. It is not just a matter of losing wildflowers, cover vegetation and the resultant sustainability, but now the trees are being affected by the drought.
The Los Angeles plan to remove the trees
So Los Angeles authorities have decided to remove all the dead and near dead trees in the city, and this amounts to around 14,000 trees. Laura Bauernfeind, a ground maintenance supervisor for the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, says, ”It’s difficult to say the specific cause of death. But the drought is a very much a very real contributing factor.”
But Kirsten Fisher, an assistant professor of biology at California State University in Los Angeles, says there are many negative consequences that tree removal could have on local ecosystems. Fisher said, “So if we take out trees and don’t replace them it has a heat island effect. But it also reduces habitat for wild animals, so birds that are migrating through or other animals that rely on trees for shelter and food will not have those trees anymore. So of course, they will be eliminated.”
Fisher points out the impact to the whole ecosystem with having no trees. Birds and insects will disappear and this will affect the pollination of our flowers and our trees. She adds, “They won’t be around to do that. So that’s a problem.” There are also the psychological benefits associated with trees. They do improve our mood and help to create feelings of well-being, she points out.
But Bauernfeind says with the drought, the city is doing a balancing act. between saving the trees and ensuring people’s safety in North Hollywood Park. “The park is 55 acres. We have 950 trees. What we have scheduled for removal is about 56 trees. That’s about 6%. That is a lot of trees when you look at the number, but there are still a lot of beautiful, mature trees here. So I don’t think it’s going to definitively change the park going experience or affect how they enjoy the park.” Yes, 56 trees is only six percent in that park, but what about the other 13,050 trees scheduled to be removed?
The bigger picture, state-wide
A U.S. Department of Agriculture report published in March 2015 showed that of the 44 million acres surveyed in California in 2014, the tree mortality rate had more than doubled from the previous year, with 909,000 acres showing elevated mortality.
Not counting the millions of trees in California either dead or dying, the drought has spread to the Lake Tahoe-Truckee region. There, over 36,000 dead or dying trees are spread across the forest. This region has also been infected with the pine bark beetle, due to the intense drought conditions weakening the trees.
In Southern California’s Los Padres National Forest, over 10 million trees have been impacted by the drought and pine bark beetles. Forestry people call trees infected with the pine bark beetle “red trees,” because of their rust-red color.
But cutting down trees just because of the drought may not be such a good thing. State agencies and non-profit organizations are banding together to launch a campaign to let people know they should water their trees, at least once in a while. Billboards and public service announcements will soon be seen saying, “Save water, save trees.”
One of the warnings going out to the public reminds people that dying trees can pose a health hazard, and keeping them alive will cost less than removing them.
