Tree Salvage – What’s that then? To answer that, I need to give a little bit of background, so here goes… As a sawmilling arboriculture and low impact forestry contractor, myself and by extension, my company O’Neill Trees & Timber Ltd. have always done things a little differently by striving to put the environment at the core of everything we do. I often get a laugh, or laughed at (?), when I describe myself as a chainsaw environmentalist. In most people’s minds, chainsaws and environmentalism are opposing philosophies, but I disagree and see chainsaws as tools for creation rather than destruction – in the right hands of course! That’s what led me down the path of sawmilling initially with an Alaskan mill several years ago and now here I am, somehow on the ASHS board.
I think it’s fair to say that for many of us involved with trees and wood, at any stage of the production process, that we like trees! We appreciate them and value them in every sense of the phrase, after all its where we generate our livelihoods from and for many of us, we spend our recreation time surrounded by them too. For me, the best trees are upright and healthy, fit for their surroundings and kept this way for as long as possible. Sequestering carbon, creating oxygen, providing habitat and promoting good physical and mental health. They have evolved for hundreds of millions of years to be amazing at what they do, and we have evolved alongside them, albeit for considerably less time and have an intrinsic connection and for good reason too. This is where our arb skills of keeping trees fit for their surroundings comes into play and having an appreciation that performing aerial tree work, particularly on mature and veteran trees is such a privilege. Trees that may have lived for several human lifetimes may go on to live a whole lot longer with high quality tree work performed with care and respect especially where a tree vs human conflict exists. Trees like all living things have a lifespan, which sooner or later comes to an end for all sorts of reasons. Some of these reasons are much more palatable than others but that is a conversation for another article.
What’s important here is that when a tree gets to the end of its lifecycle, what we do with it, is critical. Have you ever wondered where the large tree that was removed from your local park disappeared to after a storm that blew it down or when the council needed to expand a car park and removed some trees? So have I and this became particularly poignant when our local council were removing a large Cedar tree from a carpark. Jonny Chainsaw, a local chainsaw carver and I were able to mount a last minute and very hasty intervention, managing to extract most of the stem (with permission of course) before the appointed contractors cut it into short sections (as they always seem determined to do)! It was rumoured that this stem would end up in landfill, yes LANDFILL!! I’m not sure how true that is, at least I hope its not, but I couldn’t get over the thought that everyday up and down the country, large trees come to the end of their lives, then they disappear and no one seems to know or care wherethey go. How many trees does this happen to a day, a week, a month, a year? The law of averages says that at least some of these trees must be suitable for sawing and if so, how many? How much amazing wood with local character and provenance are we as millers missing out on? As importantly, how much sequestered CO2 is being prematurely released into the atmosphere, that if we were to capture some of this wood, not only could it create beautiful timber and sequester carbon, but it could also positively impact our local communities as well as the environment by creating more jobs in sawmills or maybe even more sawmills!
What if we aim to view more urban forestry trees as a potential resource rather than a ‘waste’ product or headache to get rid of? For long enough trees have been viewed as a burden particularly when the tree isn’t grown and felled for its timber value, often in our more urban settings. With the rise of biomass and the firewood markets, many good stems are lost to wood fuel as it’s a fairly quick and easy return, certainly when compared to what’s involved in turning large hardwoods into timber. As you may know, the problem with this approach is that all the sequestered carbon and other greenhouse gasses within the tree are released relatively quickly when combust or left to biodegrade. Don’t get me wrong, deadwood habitat is crucial, and we do need more (particularly standing deadwood), but for most trees large enough to be considered saw logs, there’s usually plenty branch wood to create habitat and smaller diameter lengths less appealing to the mill which can be left for habitat and should be where possible. Due to my efforts to engage with my own local council with limited success, I began to wonder how to overcome the barriers that existed locally and if these were the same barriers faced in other areas. I quickly realised that one small company can only do so much but as ASHS, maybe there was an opportunity to have a much bigger impact across the country, I just had no idea how this would work. With all of this in mind, at the previous AGM, I raised a question to see if there would be any support for engaging in some kind of project to save trees at the end of their lives from becoming a ‘waste’ product, left to rot or being burnt and called it Tree Salvage. Thankfully, there was substantial support for the concept, which I admit was initially a little emotionally charged, but this seemed to resonate with our members and approval from the AGM attendees was gained. The mission was now to set about turning this vague vision of utilising our local ‘non-commercial’ trees, into a tangible thing. The way in which we would do this was to approach Scottish Forestry (SF) for some funding to support an initial investigation into what happens to end of life trees on public land and what is the value of these trees if turned to timber, from an economic, environmental and social perspective as well as what are the current barriers preventing this from happening.
However, with the way the 24/25 budget was looking and the all-encompassing nature of the initial project proposal, Ros from SF, very diplomatically provided some feedback regarding narrowing the breadth and encouraging more focus of the initial project and maybe, just maybe, there could be a little budget left over to support our investigation. After a few anxious weeks and a revised proposal, we finally heard that approval was given to investigate the Tree Salvage potential across two local authorities, Glasgow City Council and Falkirk Council. These two were chosen as they are authorities which we have existing connections with to aid information gathering, are reasonably local and between them curate many trees of the nature we are trying to investigate. What we aim to understand is; how many trees could be failing to meet their fullest potential? What are the barriers preventing urban forest trees from becoming timber? What could the environmental, social and economic impacts of seeking out their highest potential be? Is there an appetite for understanding the CO2e storage these trees represent? Will this be of
assistance to councils in meeting their Environmental, Social and Global (ESG) requirements? How big of a difference could an objective in future public tenders be which mandates the highest use is sought for each tree being removed? Could other public and private tree owners potentially be the focus of our next area of study such as FLS, Scottish Canals and our National Parks? Finally, what are our counterparts in other parts of the world doing and can we learn from their experiences? Thankfully a small group of ASHS members with diverse backgrounds have agreed
to support the project with their experiences of trying to salvage trees in their local areas and with this insight feeding into our other data collection streams, we aim to create a framework that supports the three main actors in the production of tree salvaged timber – the tree owner, the tree contractor and the sawmiller. We will seek to underpin this framework with quantitative and qualitative data that demonstrates what the current situation is and what a more joined up approach to Tree Salvage could look like, gaining insight into the environmental, economic and social benefits it could bring. In turn, hopefully this will spur on future research which helps change the tide regarding societal attitudes towards trees at the end of their lives by putting our local trees in the high regard they deserve to be held after a life time of faithful service in O2 production, CO2 sequestration, wood formation, habitat creation, temperature regulation and a whole host of other attributes all within our local communities. More trees deserve to go on to live a second life in our homes, offices, schools and businesses whilst being a beautiful and fitting tribute to the lives they have led as well as support us in meeting our environmental and circular economy objectives. We as ASHS members can play a crucial role in making this the new norm.
If you would like to support the Tree Salvage project with insight,
experience or just to find out more
about more, please do not hesitate to
contact me: andy@treesandtimber.ltd
Written by,
Andy O’Neil
O’Neill Trees & Timber Ltd
