Don't Let Them Die--New Ideas for Protecting Old Trees

Of the recent events concerning old trees, the most well-known is certainly the issue of moving the trees at Taipei's Sungshan Tobacco Factory. The law is black and white, but the actual preservation of the old trees, and their subsequent transplantation and care, remain a headache. There are many differing points of view and cases to be made, and last year's controversy boils over to this day.

This issue is controversial, but new approaches to conservation are emerging. For example, old trees have been collected at a resort and turned into a tourist attraction. The manager of the resort collects discarded old trees and cares for them, which means a victory for both the economy and the ecology.

Also, with the Taipei City Tree Protection Bylaw in effect, there is another profession coming into prominence, devoted to maintaining the health and extending the lives of old trees-the tree doctor.

The implications of the subject of old trees are far-reaching and varied. This article aims to join these issues together and guide the reader into the world of tree preservation.

The "diameter at chest height" and "circumference at chest height" mentioned above refer to the diameter and circumference of the tree as measured at 1.3 meters from the ground.

Over the last few years, the notion of saving old trees has been gaining currency throughout Taiwan. However, without laws to back it up, there were no guarantees behind the spirit of preservation. Due to this, Ilan County took the lead and passed a Tree Protection Bylaw in late 1999. Afterwards, Taipei City and County, Taitung, Pingtung, Tainan, Taichung, and Hsinchu followed suit.

Taipei City, for example, last year passed a law drafted in 2000. The Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs, charged with administering the law, has been listing old trees' locations, and issuing them with "identification certificates." Hopefully, legal protection will help conserve old trees, find living space for them, and preserve memories of years gone by for local people.

Though the Tree Protection Bylaw has taken effect, some, unsure of its ramifications, still think that "tree conservation" simply means not cutting down trees by the roadside or in other public places.

In fact, whether a tree is on public land or in a private garden, if it meets the criteria of the Tree Protection Bylaw, it may not be cut down, moved, or otherwise harmed without permission from the proper authorities. Violators will be fined.

The first cited violation of the Taipei City Tree Protection Bylaw was in July of last year, three months after the bylaw took effect, in the well-known "Chingtien Street Incident."

The owner of a Japanese-style house was fined NT$50,000 for "over-pruning" a tree. This fine was reportedly low, as the Department of Cultural Affairs took into consideration that the tree was only trimmed in response to neighbors' concerns that in summer mosquitoes would thrive in its dense leaves. The law's lowest fine was levied, with the warning that a second violation would be punished with the heaviest fine, NT$100,000. However, the owner was very unimpressed.

Actually, the authorities had received complaints about this residence before. The owner had cut several old trees from a height of 15 meters, or approximately five stories high, to only one story high. Upon hearing these reports, the Department of Cultural Affairs went to investigate but could not enter, and could only issue a letter to the owner of the house requesting that he grant permission to the proper authorities to enter the property and inspect it. Not long after, residents made an urgent complaint that a five-story mango tree had been cut by a gardener to half its size, leaving it in a pitiful Y-shape. The Department of Cultural Affairs immediately took action. But within months similar incidents occurred on Hsiamen Street and in Lung-an Borough.

Overall, Taipei residents are divided over the city's Tree Protection Bylaw. Some support the drive to protect old trees, while others complain about blind spots in the law. For example, they claim that they have no way of knowing what constitutes "over-pruning" until after the fact when they receive a fine, and such second-guessing cannot address the heart of the problem. After all, they say, once a tree is cut, it cannot be restored, so clearer guidelines on pruning should be drawn up.

In response, the Department of Cultural Affairs has been actively making efforts to make up for this, such as surveying old trees, and publicizing those that it registers in order to educate people about their care. The idea is that citizens will find out more about the law and take its spirit to heart, avoiding further unfortunate incidents.

Old trees often fall victim to the march of civilization. Who hears their silent lament?

The passing of tree protection laws throughout Taiwan is a ray of hope in the preservation of trees, but when up against public works projects, old trees get neglected again. The law stipulates that old trees may be preserved by "heeling in" (moving a tree before construction, and moving it back after completion of a building) or transplanting. However, as the old saying goes, "For people, movement is life; for trees it is death." Old trees have difficulty in adapting to a new environment, and their survival rate is low. Also, maintaining the original appearance of a tree after it is transplanted is a difficult task which requires great effort.

In the recent controversy over the old Sungshan Tobacco Factory site, where the new "Big Egg" Taipei Sports Dome and the Taipei Cultural and Sports Park are to be built, it was decided that more than 900 old trees would be moved to other sites.

Occupying 19 hectares of land, the Sungshan site could be said to be a rare oasis of green in Taipei. Planted during the Japanese occupation period, this swathe of trees is an ecological marvel, and is also one of the few good reminders of the Japanese "go south" policy. The Sungshan Tobacco Factory, which shut down in 1998 and was then abandoned, naturally developed into an ecosystem of its own and became what could be called eastern Taipei's last "secret garden." Thus, this space that environmentalists and cultural figures advocate preserving has both ecological and historical value.

The Hsi Liu Environmental Greening Foundation carried out a survey for the Department of Cultural Affairs, and concluded that the site has 984 trees of 75 species. Of those, 132 trees of 15 different species qualified as protected trees under the Tree Protection Bylaw. Plans for a mass transplantation on this scale are unparalleled in Taipei City's history.

In March of this year, the Taipei Sports Dome planning office held an interdepartmental coordination meeting concerning the plans to relocate the trees from the Sungshan site. Initially, it was decided, 121 old trees would be preserved in their original locations. Others, such as sweetgums, Chinese fan palms, Alexander palms, and royal palms, would be heeled in by type to other areas onsite.

The Foundation has also suggested that trees be transplanted to other sites such as the future site of Paohu Elementary School on Minchuan East Road Section 6, the Neihu Tree Bank park, the Fute Environmental Protection Park in Nankang, and Chungshan Park No. 432. However, more research is required before action can be taken.

With construction on the Taipei Sports Dome slated to start in June next year, the foundation has appealed to the city government to speed up the examination process in order to allow for the process of uprooting the old trees. The uprooting process prepares trees to become quickly accustomed to a new environment before transplantation takes place in order to maintain the tree's quality and appearance. Usually the process is started six months to a year before the tree is moved. The sooner the process is started, the longer the tree has to become accustomed, and the higher its chances of survival. It is estimated that the examination process will begin in mid-May. At this pace, it seems that it will be even longer before the final destination of the Sungshan trees is decided.

Buildings may crumble and people depart, but trees keep on growing, to become mighty guardians of the land.

For many decades, people have felt that nothing can be done to reconcile the opposing interests of the ecology and the economy. Fortunately, the "economic environmentalism" sought in recent years by Western nations attempts to create a balance between the two. In Taiwan, too, there was an admirable case of someone successfully transplanting a great number of old trees and thereby creating economic value, offering a rare shady garden of green and writing a moving new chapter in Taiwan's tree story.

Yiyuan Resort, in Hualien's Shoufeng Rural Township, is one of the few Taiwanese resorts with a 5-star hotel. Its spacious, forested grounds appeal to people through its trees. Of its nearly 3000 trees, eight or nine hundred have been transplanted. Whether they are perennial sweet osmanthus in Wulai in the north, or Autumn maple trees in Fangliao, Pingtung County, in the south, operator Chen Sheng-te actively saves them from the axe by seeking out newspaper reports of reconstruction or road-widening projects. Amazingly, the survival rate of trees transplanted by Chen is nearly 100%.

According to Chen, the reason that their survival rate is so high is the methods he uses. He says, "When people get sick they need IV drips, and when trees are injured, they, too, need to be drip-fed to be slowly nourished back to health. At Yiyuan, all transplanted trees are hooked up to a water source by hoses and leach pipes, and are irrigated top to bottom three times a day, morning, noon, and evening, to keep the water in the trunk's bark from evaporating away."

In addition to this, his methods include maintaining the tree's appearance. Chen points out that while transplantations to Taipei's Ta-an Forest Park and to Yiyuan were conducted at the same time, Yiyuan's trees are lusher. The difference? "People have their looks, and trees have their shapes." Usually leaves and branches are cut from trees before transplantation, but Chen believes that this should be avoided as much as possible so as to preserve their original appearances, and that trees will grow well only when cared for as if they were people.

Chen's background is in the animal farming industry. His fate became tied to trees one day over ten years ago while driving his Mercedes Benz along the Eastern Coastal Highway 11. At the time, the highway was being widened, and workers were preparing to cut down a 100-year-old tree at the roadside. As he passed by, Chen felt a pain well up in his heart, and thought to himself, "If I want to drive a Benz I only have to work hard for ten or 20 years to achieve it, but it's not easy to see a 100-year-old tree. Think of how long it takes to get a tree with branches and leaves like that, providing shade for later generations...."

He made an offer on the spot to take the tree away at his own expense. From that moment, his fate was inextricably bound up with trees, saving them near and far, new and old, from the cutter's axe at construction sites and road projects. Every discovery and rescue makes for a moving story.

Take, for instance, the 400-year-old banyan tree which, at around five stories high, is Yiyuan's biggest, tallest, and oldest tree. This "King of Trees" even has a lightning rod at its top. Its transplantation from a cliff in Fanshuliao on the east coast cost a record-setting NT$870,000, and required eastern Taiwan's two largest cranes and three excavators.

Interestingly, no matter how they tried, workers were unable to free the tree for transport. They finally made an offering with incense, telling the tree that because they were building a bridge they needed to move her to new location, but promised to take good care of her. Miraculously, the operation started going smoothly as soon as these words were spoken. However, due to the tree's enormous size, it took workers 12 hours to transport it a distance that would usually take 30-50 minutes.

Also on the Yiyuan grounds is a shaded road lined on both sides by 66 banyan trees whose branches intertwine to form a verdant tunnel. These trees were originally planted on the grounds of an airforce base in Hualien, and were cut down during a project to widen the base's drainage ditches. When Chen got news of this, they had already been lying on the ground as if they were "garbage" for around a week, their leaves yellow. He offered to take them from the base free of charge. Even though the trees were awaiting disposal, the base in the end asked for NT$3000 per tree or NT$180,000 for all 66. Despite this, Chen felt that the trees were priceless and agreed without a second thought.

Soon after, seeing that his farm with its 200,000 chickens, 80,000 ducks, and more than 5000 pigs would be uncompetitive after Taiwan joined the WTO, Chen turned it into the famously forested Yiyuan Resort. People have also called it in fun "The Old Tree Rescue Center" and "The Homeless Tree Shelter."

Trees are the leading attraction of Hualien's Yiyuan Resort. Many have been rescued from other locations and lovingly nursed back to health.

From an ecological standpoint, the fact that most old trees are local varieties makes their preservation even more meaningful. What's more, the trees' preservation reflects a sense of local history and positively changing social trends.

Over 20 years ago, in his book We Only Have One Earth, Control Yuan member and environmental protection scholar Ma Yi-kung pointed out that many advanced countries had recognized the importance of trees in cities and had passed laws to protect them. He cited examples such as Vienna, where a referendum was held to stop a downtown university from cutting down six trees, and Hawaii, the first place in the US to legislate to protect its urban foliage by passing a law that required permission to cut or move any tree over eight feet tall, whether in a private garden or a public park.

While other countries have been taking action by passing tree protection ordinances for years, Taiwan's various local tree protection laws show that the level of environmental consciousness is rising here too.

Old trees, standing as testament to history and accompanying people through the years, are often the first sacrifice made in civilization's progress. These voiceless old trees convey countless tales of people and places. Let's all work to protect them!

Trees with protected status, whether on public or private land, may not be cut without permission from the authorities.