On Monday, Earth Day, the University cut down 30 trees by Dickinson dining hall and the University Union — the former location of the Earth Day celebration — while the Earth Day festival took place in the Events Center parking lot.
Poor timing and striking irony aside, we understand that construction often requires removing trees. But there are established guidelines that the University simply failed to follow.
The Committee for the University Environment (CUE) is made up of respected faculty members in the biology and environmental studies departments, as well as the steward of the Nature Preserve, representatives from the administration and Physical Facilities and several students, among other faculty and staff. The University is supposed to consult CUE before any changes that will have a major impact on the University’s natural environment. The committee’s landscaping policy includes recommendations for tree species that should be planted on campus, goals for improving biodiversity and a 1:3 suggested ratio for tree removal to replanting.
In place of the 30 trees removed from Dickinson, the University plans to plant 11 new trees on site — the exact opposite of what they should be doing. To be fair, Physical Facilities told us that they do follow the 1:3 guidelines and plan to plant according to the ratio with CUE input. But as far as we know, no formal plans have been made to actually follow through, and this wouldn’t be the first time the University ignored CUE’s pleas to care for the natural areas on campus.
A committee like CUE deserves to be revered and to have a prominent role in every construction decision on campus. We can’t expect every landscaper or construction worker to have studied Binghamton’s natural environment to know how drastic changes will affect it. But we have a group of committed, concerned and highly intelligent faculty — CUE’s chair, Professor Julian Shepherd, received his B.A. from Cornell and Ph.D. from Harvard — who have done exactly that. And they’re simply not being listened to.
Take the Science I construction project. Although CUE calls for larger trees, which provide shade and fix carbon, to be planted on campus, the University replaced the trees they removed from the now-Harpur Quad with small trees, shrubs and bushes.
The Dickinson project is equally ignorant of environmental concerns. Some of the trees removed were Austrian Pines, which are not native to this area and are susceptible to infection — in fact, many of the Austrian Pines on campus are infected already. But the University plans to replace the Dickinson trees with, among other species, more Austrian Pines.
CUE is an advising board for the University. They can’t force administrators to listen to their policies, or to show more concern for our natural areas, or even to run construction decisions by them before uprooting more trees. They can and will, we trust, continue to follow up on detrimental decisions the University makes and keep shouting until their voices are heard. And hopefully, watching the University tearing up the center of campus on Earth Day will rouse students enough to join them.