Why I think planting trees isn't always the climate fix everyone says it is

I was at a town hall meeting in Stockton last spring, and this old farmer stood up. He said the city was planting eucalyptus trees along the riverbank to fight climate change, but eucalyptus soaks up way too much water and kills native plants. He asked the panel why they weren't planting oaks instead, and nobody had a good answer. It stuck with me because everyone just assumes all tree planting is good, but the wrong tree can mess up the local ecosystem. Has anyone else had a similar experience with well-meaning projects going kind of sideways?

2 comments

2 Comments

abbyg1425d ago

Did your friend in Phoenix hear about the trouble with the tamarisk trees we had out here in California too, @alice336? My neighbor out in Bakersfield planted a whole row of those fast-growing nonnative trees for shade and ended up with busted irrigation lines and a yard full of dead native shrubs within two years.

alice33625d ago

My friend in Arizona told me about this big "plant a million trees" push they did in Phoenix a few years ago. They went with these fast-growing mesquite trees from South America because they were cheap and grew quick, but they ended up cracking sidewalks and sewer lines everywhere. The roots were super aggressive and choked out the native palo verde trees that the local birds actually needed. Now the city is spending way more money digging them up than they saved on the original planting, which is just a mess.