Chapter 4:
From Cutting to Caring:
A New Perspective on TreeStewardship

A Moment of Clarity: The Mesquite Moment

There was a time when I was taught that the best way to care for trees was to cut. It was what the industry expected, what clients demanded, and what my peers praised. But over the years, as I spent my time working on trees and making careful observations, something began to become clear to me. The more I watched, listened, and gathered data, the more I realized that the very practices I was implementing in an attempt to care for trees had the oppositeeffect.

This realization didn’t come overnight; it took time. It began with a nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right. I remember the day it hit me the hardest. I had been pruning mesquite trees, which was common during my years in the desert southwest, and had multiple calls from clients who had branches break post-pruning. So, feeling awful—something not felt by all in the same situation—and concerned for their care, I reviewed my pruning objectives and compared them to industry standards. I also analyzed the scientific practices common to other companies in my industry. My conclusion: I had done nothing wrong—at least, according to the guidelines I hadfollowed.

But back to how I felt awful. It’s something that some people have, but not everyone does: empathy. Almost a tortuous virtue, if you know what I mean. The kind that keeps you up at night wondering what you had done wrong, concerned that your actions had caused someone else pain. In these cases, there is only one thing that alleviates your torture: fixing the thing that you think you’ve donewrong.

A New Understanding: The Problem with Thinning

So, I continued with caution. Maybe it was just something to do with the wind in relation to the weight of the branches and the time of year, I kept telling myself. But that didn’t make me feel anybetter.

And then another call came in, my torture personified. I found myself in so much emotional pain that I went back to that quiet inner place that I had developed in my youth, a place that had always guided me when my world didn’t make sense. I stayed there until something clicked: the branches had been isolated by the wind due to the thinning that had taken place, and those branches weren’t accustomed to theload.

It wasn’t so much the wind loading that was the problem but me changing it. Reaching this conclusion was a monumental moment for me, as I was a lone wolf. I had no science-driven engine behind me or peers to bounce my ideasoff.

It’s also worth noting that the region in which I worked was extremely cutthroat. Fortunately, years later, I’ve found a different group in arboriculture that is supportive, but it’s a groupworldwide.

But back to my deduction. Mind you, it was also in the late 2000s, and thinning was a normal practice—encouraged even. So, I immediately stopped the practice of thinning and began to speak out, loudly, much to the angst of my peers. Some understood what I was saying, but others took it as a personal attack. And some stilldo.

Fortunately, today I have a much better understanding of the concept and can articulate the science behind the relationship better through mass damping, reaction wood in relation to load, and how biomass loss affects wood functionality, physiology, ca