How important are trees? They do more than just produce oxygen. Studies have suggested that green corridors can do wonders for any city, from reducing crime, to increasing home values.

A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor declared that the trees are saving the City of Baltimore.

With concern growing about climate change and rapid worldwide urbanization, city forests have emerged as one widely touted solution to a host of social and environmental challenges, the article declared. Municipalities from Barcelona, Spain; to Melbourne, Australia; to Chicago have put urban canopy coverage at the center of their long-term strategic plans. Community groups focusing on planting, maintaining, and saving trees have blossomed across the U.S. In 2015, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Cities named increasing green canopy coverage as one of its top 10 urban initiatives.

There’s also an effort to reverse a staggering trend: our forests are disappearing. A Forest Service report published last year found that across the U.S., populated areas lost about 175,000 acres of trees per year between 2009 and 2014, or approximately 36 million trees per year. Forty-five states had a net decline in tree cover in these areas, with 23 of those states experiencing significant decreases. Meanwhile, urban regions showed a particular decline, along with an increase in what the researchers call “impervious surfaces” – in other words, concrete.

We’ve witnessed that decline first hand. The large track of land that was cleared more than a decade ago near the New York State Thruway exit in Newburgh was supposed to be the home for a large shopping mall. It was never built, but the land remains barren. Deforestation has led to more sightings of deer, bobcats, bears and other wild animals that were evicted from their natural habitat.

Decades of exodus from the cities to the suburbs have cost us acres and acres of forests. As that trend shows signs of reversing - in 2009, the United Nations estimated that 3 million people worldwide moved to a city every week – an increase in the tree population in urban areas would also generate positive results.

In Baltimore, the urban forest movement grew out of a need to lower the levels of nitrogen in Chesapeake Bay. Scientists discovered that the best way to reduce nitrogen was to plant more trees throughout the city. That led to a large green space emerging in the middle of the city- that led to more shade, cooler temperatures and a large dash of civic pride.
“Now there are benches and clearings and a sign at the edge of the forest welcoming visitors,” the Christian Science Monitor reports, that has led to “events in the woods, including an edible hike, in which participants cook food harvested from the forest. When the group recently organized a ‘haunted woods’ evening, more than 90 people attended. There is still trash, but much less of it, and … same neighbors who once used the woods as a dump” are now participating.

Perhaps it’s a model that can be followed here in the Mid Hudson. What if we planted trees in vacant lots, as well as in our parks? Might it make our towns, villages and cities healthier places to live? And would that make us all better citizens?

It might be worth a try.