To the Editor,

On Monday, August 21st, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM), to get good publicity, issued a press release which soon made news headlines that they were going to give away 1,000 free trees. On the surface, this sounds like a great thing. However, on that very same day, DEM logged in a 45-acre native forest in the Hillsdale Preserve on state-owned land.

DEM claimed the logging operation was a “restoration” to fight climate change. They further claimed that most of the trees in the area were dead, yet they admitted in their press release they would log living oaks as well. In their place, DEM plans to plant non-native tree species including chinkapin oaks, shellbark hickories, and southern pines which they claim would be better adapted to the effects of climate change. To call this operation a restoration is a lie since no natural ecosystem is being restored. It is being destroyed.

I visited the 45-acre forest two days before it was logged and found many healthy native trees marked to be logged including Red Oak, Yellow Birch, American Hornbeam, and American Holly. Both mature trees and saplings were marked to be logged.

Why is DEM logging a native forest with trees that are thriving despite climate change just to plant non-native trees that could have disastrous effects on the state’s natural ecology?

After I visited the 45-acre site, I went to an area in the Hillsdale Preserve that was already logged. DEM clearcut the forest in 2018, and in the past five years, the forest never grew back. It is just a field now. DEM is destroying our native forests!

When you look more into the DEM 1,000 trees planting program, you will find that four out of the five tree species DEM is giving away are not native to Rhode Island.

Trident maple, sweetgum, willow oak, and dawn redwood are not native species!

It is outrageous that DEM is logging our native forests, destroying native biodiversity, releasing carbon emissions, and creating fire hazards while planting non-native trees that do nothing to help the state ecologically and could never make up for the carbon lost in the forests DEM logged this year.

Nathan Cornell

President of the

Old Growth Tree Society

Warwick