It’s important to change the common opinions on what makes a tree beautiful, because if we are to live with any responsibility for our planet, it requires both environmental mindfulness, and an awareness of the impacts we have on other animals and plants we share our space with.
An inviting hollow in a dead branch for birds and small mammals. Madison Heights, MI
The urban forest is where we live. An artificial landscape built on top of a once natural one, like a forest or swamp in my region. A lot of animals are displaced in the process of making our urban forest, a lot of trees removed too.
However, as we replant our environment we often don’t allow trees to live their entire lifespan and fully fulfill their roles in the ecosystem. Once trees reach a certain aesthetic or are undesired for whatever reason, they’re prematurely removed. Sometimes that’s the right course of action. But a tree in a natural forest serves thousands of other organisms, even once it has been dead for decades. I’d like to convince you to leave as many trees alone as possible, regardless of age or condition.
It doesn’t take much to help make a difference. Consider something easy, like leaving the dead wood in your trees. This is a subject I talk with homeowners a lot about. It's a simple way to both save cost and benefit the wildlife around us.
What’s the big deal?
Signs of a woodpecker investigating for invertebrates to eat inside dead wood. Even this small dead branch is still ecologically useful. Ferndale, MI
One of the most common things I do as a working arborist is remove dead wood from trees. It’s OK to leave some, or even all dead wood in your trees. That’s a strange idea coming from an arborist, isn’t it? It’s a seemingly mundane issue. Just remove the dead wood and make the tree look pretty, that seems a pretty intuitive thing to do to a tree, easy money.
The more time I spend with trees the more my view of beauty expands. Not all trees have to look perfect and neat. To me the most beautiful, revered trees are old and haggard. Those trees are considered pristine because they are literally pillars of their communities. All parts of the trees, either live or dead, support a litany of other organisms by providing food and shelter, including you technically.
If you look at the bark of a tree, you see lichen. On the leaves, you can find insects feeding and fighting. In cavities, woodpeckers, or maybe even raccoons. The dead parts support life too of course: fungi and other microbes decompose dead tissue, contributing to the nitrogen and carbon cycle. Amphibians live beneath those rotting logs on the ground too.
Throughout a tree’s life, from a sapling to a veteran, they’re being utilized by something else. The older they are, the more species they’ve helped and are currently helping. The big deal is that they’re not only your trees. They’re everyone’s trees.
Dead wood
Dead wood does not necessarily indicate the tree is dying. As trees age, their structure becomes more and more complex, and the branches act independently of one another. This means one limb can shade out a limb beneath it, causing some dieback. In other cases, peripheral dieback is normal for a tree of considerable age or stress. This naturally occurring habit in trees is not always a concern, although sometimes it can be. That’s why when one branch dies, it doesn’t necessarily indicate problems for the tree as a whole. The natural shedding of its own branches is called cladoptosis.
It must be stated, of course you should remove dead wood out in certain instances -- a large dead branch over your house, or high traffic area can be hazardous. For some beautification purposes too, a front-yard tree should look however you’d like it to look.
Some trees form dead wood naturally, while others form dead branches or decayed cavities because of human activity. Improperly pruning a tree can jeopardize the entire tree, and thereby compromising the organisms dependent on that tree too. Interestingly though, improperly handled trees are equally valuable for their habitat potential. It is becoming more obvious as time goes on how well trees handle being mangled and ruined. As a general rule though, a low impact approach is best.
While determining the protocol of what to do with a particular tree, watch for birds or mammals around the tree. Do you really have to remove that tree?
This is a snag. This dead beech has served countless organisms during its life and its death. It will take a long time before it has been completely consumed by decay fungi. Royal Oak, MI
Let’s say an beetle entered into a stressed maple tree, and has proliferated throughout the tree. In extreme numbers, the larvae of the beetle can kill the entire tree because they through eat the “veins” of the tree, preventing it from getting water to the leaves. The beetle larvae, though, provide a food source for woodpeckers and other birds. Once those holes made by those birds become large enough, they provide shelter for mammals or roosting birds; their nests lined with dead twigs and leaves. Other cavities formed from pruning are equally hospitable to larger animals. There are some animal species that only live in wood cavities.
The wildlife using the trees around you has evolved in places where the dead wood was not actively removed. Removing dead wood for the sake of hazards is OK, but for aesthetic reasons it is not entirely justified because of the displacement it causes for wildlife. In our urban forest, dead wood habitat is becoming increasingly rare on account of human activity.
An Easy Choice to Make
Ok, we get it, protect the wildlife. The topic might seem like beating a dead horse, but there’s still something being missed. Wildlife conservation isn’t just something forest rangers or scientists do-- it’s something everybody can and should do. Every small act counts, and that’s the only way these concepts work.
Choosing to keep some or all of the dead wood in your trees is a money saver and habitat saver. If you have some trees with dead wood without targets to damage should they fall, saving that dead wood is beneficial to the habitat you share with the wildlife around you. If dead wood is removed from the tree, consider leaving the wood intact on the property. Or if you must chip it up, keep the wood chips as mulch around your trees.
I’d especially like to encourage those of us involved in these fields of urban forestry to employ more environmental mindfulness. First and foremost, tree first. Figure out ways to preserve habitat, or even create some. Have those challenging conversations with homeowners about preserving the wildlife around them. They’re here too, after all.