You may not have heard, because shockingly Register Editor Matt Schwenke didn’t put the story on the front page, but Whitewater, Wisconsin has been named a Tree City USA designee.
Not just for the current year, but for the last fifteen. One might suspect that an honor bestowed fifteen consecutive times isn’t much of an honor, and if you think so, I’d say you’re right.
In fact, I can prove it.
Consider, first, what goes into being a tree city in the first place. Schwenke ably sets out the four criteria that Whitewater has reputedly assuredly met: (1) maintain a tree board or commission, (2) maintain a tree care ordinance, (3) maintain an annual community forestry budget of at least $2 per capita, and (4) hold an arbor day observance, proclamation, whatever.
We have a tree commission, and we do have ordinances about trees, so we have met the first two. Lest anyone – anyone – in this micropolitan paradise believe that I doubt the quality of the tree commission, I can assure him or her otherwise. Actually, as far as I know, the Whitewater Tree Commission is likely far more thorough than the Whitewater Police and [sic] Fire Commission. The agendas of the TC seem as good, for example, as the agendas of the PFC. Better, really, when one considers the commensurately greater effort that should go into the PFC’s work.
Sadly although we do have ordinances concerning trees, we don’t need any. Not ordinances, not regulations, not even suggested guidelines. There have been trees in North America long before the first human inhabitants arrived on this continent, and they grew without either commissions or ordinances. They grew all over the place. There were so many, and still are so many trees, that large clusters of them are even called forests. So common are these clusters, that there’s a word in the English language devoted to the idea (and fact) that one finds lots of trees in dense, dank clusters.
As for Arbor Day, well, that’s a farcical requirement of the Tree City USA program, I’d guess. No one really knows when Arbor Day is commemorated, and – amazingly – a number even smaller than no one actually cares.
Other than by beavers, perhaps, these trees were naturally unthreatened. They grew without human oversight, ordinances, vision statements, or task force recommendations. If we leave them alone, they’ll probably grow like that again. Bigger, even.
That we pay over $2 per capita for a forestry budget is unsound and unnecessary. Many times – over a dozen, I wouldn’t wonder – I have seen squirrels carry acorns around, assuring the propagation of oaks without any human action. These small rodents require no remuneration, and even if they did, they’re too small to reach a teller’s counter to cash whatever checks our municipality might improvidently issue for their efforts.
There are at least 14,296 people living in Whitewater, and that means at least $28,592 in required Tree City USA funding that the trees do not need. I’d say our trees, but why be so possessive. They’re not really ours, are they? No!
The trees belong only to themselves. Set aside your controlling inclinations, people of Whitewater, the Center of Opportunity, and your need of ordinances.
Let the trees live free, as they once did.