Egan: Tallying the trees — urban forest volunteers branch out across city | Ottawa Citizen

Author of the article: Kelly Egan Darlene Pearson is the co-ordinator of a group called Centretown Neighbourwoods that has a network of about 30 volunteers who are cataloguing and monitoring the big trees in the central Ottawa neighbourhood. Photo by Errol McGihon /Postmedia I have the good fortune of living on a beautifully treed street. It can look cathedral-like in summer, especially the section with majestic maples, their tallest limbs — braiding over the dappled road — leaving a tunnel of cooling shade. Advertisement This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. So when the city put a big red X on a foundational maple last month, it felt like an impending act of wreckage — like someone stealing the town clock — altering the very way the sun has fallen, the seasons counted, for 70-some years.  Funny about big, old city trees. They’re both free and priceless, belong to no one and everyone. With climate change and housing intensification — on top of murderous insects and freak storms — residents all across Ottawa (and maybe the pandemic helped) are watching their urban canopy with more organized eyes. Neighbourwoods, a program developed by a pair of University…
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