Why the Urban Environment Is Critical Habitat

(The author, Pepper Provenzano, is Sunday editor on the World Desk of The Salt Lake Tribune. He is the founding president of TreeUtah and TreeLink. This article is reprinted with permission of The Salt Lake Tribune.)

While many cities are unique for their tree-covered landscapes, those who inventory such things know the "urban forest" is often small compared to the surrounding "greenbelt" and is by no means robust. Salt Lake City is a case in point.

There is more implied by a struggling urban forest than environmental fragility. The community's future vitality may hang in the balance, and there are principles here that apply globally.

Worldwide, the No. 1 threat to plant and animal life is loss of habitat, says E.O. Wilson, ecologist, author and professor of biology at Harvard.

Most scientists agree, but does that same threat apply to humans?

Ty Harrison, resident ecologist at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, agrees that principle applies to human behavior. Loss of habitat he asserts, contributes to the pathology emerging in communities today.

Rene DuBus, biologist and Pulitzer Prize winning author, says humans are so adaptable they can adjust to pathological environments which eventually impoverish the human spirit. "It's a case for using native ecological models for landscaping that supports biodiversity in our cities," Harrison says. "In urban settings, people have been divorced from nature too long. That's the major reason for protecting any scrap of nature in our cities, and then we need to bring nature back, and not only in recreational parks and golf courses. What comes after is wildlife habitat restoration."

"The battle for a sustainable environment will be won or lost in the urban centers of the world," according to Maurice Strong, chairman of Ontario Hydro in Canada and architect of the Rio Earth Summit.

It doesn't take a weather vane to know which way the wind blows. You might look in your own backyard.

A satellite photo of Salt Lake City, for example, discloses the stark contrast between the downtown neighborhoods and their surroundings. Satellite depiction's of most U.S. metropolitan centers show the same thing. Green space is vanishing while impervious surfaces span our urban landscapes.

Man-made urban ecosystems, exploding with little forethought and less control, are dominated by concrete, blacktop and buildings. A far cry from what's "natural," they provide testimony to man's extraordinary ability to soil his own nest.

Since so many of today's urban adolescents, referred to as "at-risk," experience aimlessness, anger, a loss of wonder and hopelessness, it's worth considering if that results from habitat loss.

Are today's youth suffering the same depletion as their surroundings? "Scientists define pollution as energy waste," says Andy Lipkis, Los Angeles-based environmental consultant and president of TreePeople.

"Society needs that energy."

Various specialists are attempting to explain problems threatening the world's growing urban populations. Here's what we know:
*Global population is expected to double in the next 50 years.
*Nearly 80 percent of Americans live in urban ecosystems.
*The world's big cities are growing by a million people a week, while rural populations will be declining in real terms, the World Bank reports.
*The number of cities with populations of more than 1 million will grow from 288 in 1990 to 391 by the end of this century, including 26 virtually unmanageable "megacities" with populations of more than 10 million.

If, as the late President John F Kennedy observed, "Our youth are our greatest natural resource," wasting that asset would be particularly tragic if the environment's influence on the young is misunderstood by adult neglect, contributing to alienation, aimlessness and self-defeat.

Trees are the "predominant indicator species" of a healthy urban ecosystem, says Don Willike, past president of American Forests and the National Urban Forest Council. "American cities are losing an average four trees for every one planted."

The dollar value of these trees is immense. What then is the value of lost youth?

Youth, energy, habitat: These are vitally connected. By bringing them together, perhaps we can instill a sense of hope and moral responsibility in urban youths affected by violence and despair.

"As we progress into the future, the population of the world is going to go up, economic activity will go up and the human effect on the environment will intensify," said Dr. Charles Kennel, associate administrator for Mission to Planet Earth. "We need to know what is happening, in an objective, scientific way."

This urban onslaught hasn't spared Salt Lake City, where half the city's forest contains over mature trees in their declining years. And according to the governor's Office of Management and Budget, Utah's population will increase 80 percent in the next 25 years.

Clearly, then, if Earth Day is every day - and next year brings the 30th anniversary - the opportunity encourages proclamation for a preserved and expanded urban forest, important as never before in a safe, secure and civilizing human habitat.