It is a truism—that is readily acknowledged when it is pointed out but is rarely noticed, thought about, or publically recognized—that ARBORICULTURE differs widely from FORESTRY…. through the nature of their products and through the timing of their harvests.
Forestry is concerned with trees in large groups, as a crop; the harvest occurs when the tree dies. The tree is killed deliberately. Its corpse then Is peeled and sliced, and the slices are sold. Forestry is a very useful, indeed necessary, aspect of crop-raising agriculture. But it is one whose viewpoint is worlds apart from that of Arboriculture.
Arboriculture, by contrast, is concerned about the care and well-being of individual trees; the harvest ceases when the tree dies. The tree's death takes place in spite of every effort by the arborist to save it. The harvest consists of whatever annual value can be assigned to human enjoyment of the tree's beauty and appreciation of its presence in our midst as a fellow living being. The harvest is an uplifting of our spirits.
Naturally some of the benefits of trees occur in bothforestry and arboriculture. Trees under both circumstances influence climate, cool the air by evaporation, intercept sunlight, modify wind force, alter fog, redistribute snow deposition, reduce soil erosion, temper air pollution, diminish noise levels, frame vistas, screen unpleasant sights, and direct attention. The difference lies in the attitude toward the individual tree's value as "harvest."
The harvest value of the shade or ornamental tree (the concern of Arboriculture) is an aesthetic one, an emotional one. Therefore this value is very difficult to determine, although a good many methods have been adopted to assign a value to an individual tree and an "annual crop value" can also be calculated. Certainly the value of such a tree is far higher than what people will pay for a few wooden boards: one need only notice what they will pay to save and care for the shade trees in their yards!
Since the yield of the shade tree is beauty, the tree's position in society is comparable to that of music, of drama, of poetry, and of art. Thus the arborist is equivalent to the musician, the actor, the poetry-reader, and the painter or sculptor. The landscaper is equivalent to the composer, the playwright, the poet, and the artist. The municipal tree official is equivalent to the art museum director, the symphony conductor, the organizer of concerts or drama series, and the publisher of poems, plays, sheet music, and books of art.
Both arborist and artist/musician/poet, etc., require technical skills and require understanding of the scientific principles underlying their activities. But the daily work of the arborist contrasts drastically with that of the musician, the artist, the poet, etc. Their occupations are more-or-less sedentary and safe, but the arborist's is not.
Of them all, only the arborist works at the daily risk of life and limb. Arboriculture is a profession with chain-saws that can cut the operator, chippers that can devour the worker, high voltage current whose contact can cook the unwary, daily handling of necessarily poisonous chemicals that can accumulate in anyone's body, high places a climber can fall from, and streets teeming with rapid, thoughtless traffic where every arborist often must stand.
The work environment is not forgiving. An additional high technical skill therefore is demanded in every good arborist: the skill of safety. The aphorism about wartime pilots ("There are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots") applies to our own profession as well.
No amount of attention to safety can be too much. It needs to be spoken of daily. And, just as in driving a car, a little fear helps. It is actually desirable to be afraid: because when one stops being afraid, one's life comes at once into danger. (Perhaps the worst effect of either alcohol or a drug is to quell the sense of fear….and then someone dies.)
But there's another side to this coin, too. The arborist is deserving of two special kinds of high social respect. In our society there's a high respect for the Fine Arts (music, poetry, drama, painting) and Arboriculture deserves its share in that. But in our society there's also a high respect for bravery, bravery of the kind that includes fear (as described in the 10th part of the Boy Scout law: “…He has the courage to face danger in spite of fear…”), and here again Arboriculture deserves to share this respect.
Arboriculture is a wonderful and challenging profession, a profession devoted to bringing beauty to all people, all the while facing personal danger and applying both high scientific knowledge and the special skills of safety under hazardous conditions.
Let us all be proud of Arboriculture….proud that arborists care of their fellow people enough to risk their lives daily to bring to everyone a source of emotional comfort in times when anguish, stress, sorrow and a myriad lesser unpleasantnesses plague us.
- © 1988, International Society of Arboriculture. All rights reserved.