Protecting Gillson’s Green Spaces and At-Risk Trees

Over 90% of residents visit Gillson at least once a year. We go to Gillson for its wide open spaces, beautiful beach, majestic trees, and lovely vistas. Gillson is uncomplicated and easy to get around. It allows us to wander and wonder. When we are there, we find calm, peace, and freedom from our busy, programmed lives. New research shows that urban residents benefit most from parks that are not neat and tidy. We have that in our own backyard. What we need are parks with large open spaces, different types of areas to explore, native plantings that support our birds and wildlife, and opportunities to experience solitude and a sense of remove from civilization. These are precisely the principles on which Gillson was originally designed. For our own best health and well-being, we must continue to rely upon them in planning for Gillson’s future.

We value Gillson’s trees as much as its open space. Many trees there are huge and beautiful, displaying a wonderful color palette over the seasons. But they are not just pretty. They are superheroes in our fight against climate change, storing massive amounts of carbon and lowering temperatures as much as 10-20 degrees on a hot summer day. We have to shift our thinking and policy-making to value trees as vital infrastructure assets, just as important as sewers, power lines, and roads. And not just any trees. It is our large, mature trees that will help us fight climate change NOW. Young saplings just don’t cut it. It will be decades and decades before they grow large enough to store carbon or lower temperatures effectively. It is short-sighted to think we can cut a large tree down and replace it with some smaller trees. It doesn’t work that way.

We can’t wait. Climate change is here. It is now. We need to maintain and protect Gillson’s large trees today. For years, the Park District has neglected to prune or treat its trees, perhaps because they think is cheaper to replace a tree than maintain it. But that is wrong-headed and not sound policy. They have made no effort to replace or plant new trees in Gillson for many years, even when residents are willing to pay much of the cost. We have to do more than just maintain Gillson’s trees. We should be planting new trees every year. These new trees will eventually replace our mature trees and become the superheroes we need.

Residents have asked the Park District for a comprehensive landscape plan for Gillson for more than 10 years. And the Park Board has done nothing. They have no arborist on staff and only recently completed a tree inventory to assess the condition of Gillson’s trees. By their count, 56 in Gillson are in poor condition and need to be removed. These are not the up to 90 trees that we identified would be removed if the most drastic proposal for Gillson presented in May had been adopted. Some of the 90 we counted may be in poor condition, but many more are healthy. All would have been cut down to widen roads, allow two-way traffic, and add new entrances. The Park District does not own Gillson’s trees. Their benefits extend to the whole community, and we must nurture and protect them for ourselves and future generations.