Chop Down Trees to be More Green in the Glove

Glover Park is not my neighborhood, but it’s one I frequent. It has its problems (Republican yuppies & southern food restaurants galore), but it is quiet and very green, which is nice. Make that WAS very green. Without warning, Stoddert Elementary School took over a beautiful park and chopped down a majority of the park’s forest.

As Rebecca, over at welovedc.com outlines, this is all part of a large project to revamp the school and add a public gym. Great. The construction should achieve LEED certification. Even better.

Did you have to chop down all the trees to do this???

As anyone who has taken Environmental Science 101 can tell you, you can not go about chopping down trees in a group willy nilly and expect the others to be fine. Trees on the outside of the forest group are important and stronger than trees on the inside, and when you just cut them down because they might be slightly inconvenient, the others slowly start to die.

Sigh. How’s that LEED certification coming along?

The pictures below show views that used to be forested: