by John Traveler

Created on: December 15, 2009   Last Updated: December 16, 2009

Making a trip to the local national forest to select and cut down a Christmas tree is as big a part of Americana as apple pie. Unfortunately, most Americans today don't get the opportunity to do that and must settle for a commercially harvested tree. Either way, many might contend that taking trees out of the forest is bad for the environment.

In fact, people who think taking Christmas trees from the forest is bad for the environment are sadly misinformed because just the opposite is true. It is well known in forest management these days that human intervention to prevent forest fires was a much more environmentally unsound practice.

When small trees and brush are allowed to accumulate the potential of devastating forest fires increases and the overall health of the forest declines. Insect populations flourish and eventually they take millions of grown trees per year, devastating once healthy forests.

Cutting Christmas trees is one very small way of managing forest undergrowth, controlling insect infestation and actually promoting healthy forests. But the small number of Christmas trees taken for seasonal ornamental purposes is trivial compared to the number of trees taken through U.S. Forest Service contracted programs to reduce fire fuel load. And most of this underbrush and small trees is run through  chippers and burned in biomass energy plants to produce electricity.

By burning these renewable fuel supplies, the need to burn coal and oil is lessened and thereby actually helps the environment by reducing carbon pollution of the atmosphere.

Interestingly, if you visit public lands that have been manicured to remove brush and dense populations of small conifers and pine, you find that within five years or so, new trees have taken root and the forest comes alive with flora and fauna under a canopy of older growth trees.

The net out is that taking small Christmas trees for seasonal display is actually a small part of a much bigger program which in fact, preserves and enhances the environment.

Consider now in contrast, the production of artificial Christmas trees using Poly Vinyl Chloride(PVC) and Vinyl acetates, both of which are heavy duty pollutants made from oil. There can be no disputing that the production and eventual disposal of these artificial trees is harmful to the environment.

Most municipalities provide biomass recycling for real Christmas trees, while their artificial counterparts are not recyclable and end up in land fills.  

For time immemorial, our Teutonic ancestors celebrated the Yule festival and later Christmas with the ritual cutting and ornamental adorning of Christmas trees. If nothing else, this celebration of peace and good will to men, and women too, is conducive to more reasonable attitudes and a sense of humanist responsibility. If anything, this too, can only be good for the environment on Earth, an environment that we humans are part of. 

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