It's been that kind of winter...

"This image shows the Great Lakes on February 19, 2014, when ice covered 80.3 percent of the lakes - coverage not achieved since 1994." Credit: Jeff Schmaltz

And this year we're having post-ice storm tree thoughts. Here are some intelligent ones:

• "Trees and Ice Storms: The development of Ice Storm–Resistant Urban Tree Populations" (thanks to Darcie McKelvey, editor of the Waterloo-Wellington Wildflower Society's "Dogtooth" newsletter, for recommending it!)
• "The City’s Trees Were Hit Hard by the Ice Storm - But a Toronto arborist explains that post-storm cleanup and long-term tree care will require far more than picking up branches and wielding chainsaws"

 And then, there's this, "Winter works more on... our own physicality than the landscape – the sheer stress that the season can put on our skin and bones, making us clench and resist the environment and resent our own limitations." -Harry Wade

"U of T's forestry school faces the axe"

"U of T's forestry school faces the axe" - The Globe and Mail.

The article is from April 1st. (apologies it slipped by me).

"Student Eric Jacobsen said “We do a lot more social and integrative approaches to forestry ...and it’s also less of an industry-focused program.”"

And a choice place to learn about urban forestry.

I'm dumbfounded.

Why compromise the capacity of a faculty that already exists?

And I can't imagine a worse time to do it.

To state the obvious: currently this city and cities across this country are dealing with massive urban reforestation commitments (variations of planting X# trees, &/or achieving X% canopy cover, by Y date). It seems to me that our best urban foresters are still struggling to figure out what those targets even mean, or should mean. Will it mean x% canopy cover that will last 30 or a 130 years? Which species: indigenous, native, exotic, invasive, GM'd, mass produced cheap clones? Beyond carbon sequestration, which ecological services should be integrated into those targets? And then, how to pull together the political will and the required resources to make make intelligent policies actually happen on the ground? This current surge of tree planting funding is a sudden and massive experiment, and a responsibility and opportunity happening on our watch. And so are its impacts on a changing mix of urban forestry stewardship orgs, private and public sector urban forestry industries and its professions. All of this at time when we know our urban forests are in ecological crises, e.g. degradation from historic and changing land uses, the challenge of reducing urban sprawl so we can retain ecological heritage and functions, the need to remediate post-industrial contamination in soil and groundwater, invasive species and climate change.

An intelligent continuing commitment to develop the skills and capacity necessary to understand, conserve, restore and engineer beneficial ecological function of our forests (urban and otherwis) can only help. Which leads me to wonder, if not now, when would be a more relevant and necessary time or opportunity for us /our universities, to support and study forestry?