Tree

• Many of these tree planting projects target Africa’s rangelands (open grasslands or shrublands used by livestock and wild animals).
• Our goal is to protect and promote rangelands that combat desertification and support economic
  growth, resilient livelihoods and the sustainable development of pastoralism.
• In pursuit of this goal, we reviewed all the scientific studies we could find on the effects of planting trees in rangelands.

Why rangelands matter

• Rangelands provide critical ecosystem services, but these are lost when open grassy vegetation is converted to forest or plantation.
• Many rangelands are too dry, steep or rocky to grow crops but are suited for livestock grazing to produce meat, milk and fibres such as wool.
• Read more:
  When tree planting actually damages ecosystems

  The ecosystem services provided by rangelands are generally overlooked while those provided by forests and trees are assumed to be far superior.

Afforestation in the wrong places often fails

• This is a suitable form of land use for those environments, which would be harmed by planting trees.
• Tree planting projects are commonly portrayed as reforestation, which implies that the target areas have lost their original forest cover.
• In fact, planting trees in rangelands that naturally have low tree cover is afforestation.
• This often fails because they don’t have enough rainfall throughout the year to support high tree cover.

Afforestation can be damaging to people, water and climate

• Despite being portrayed as supporting local economic development and ecosystem restoration, afforestation projects often exclude existing land users and limit their access to land and resources.
• Rangeland afforestation also reduces streamflow and lowers water tables as trees use much more water than grasses.

What is a better solution?

• If these initiatives were focused on degraded forest instead, three-quarters of degraded forests could be restored.
• In rangelands, the best approach is to protect and enhance their existing carbon stores rather than replacing them with forests or plantations.

Susanne Vetter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Who makes the words? Why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes and who makes the names? - Elliot, age 5, Eltham, Victoria
Who makes the words? Why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes and who makes the names? - Elliot, age 5, Eltham, Victoria

• Let’s start with the first part of the question: who makes words?
• Well, there’s no official person or group that’s responsible for making words.
• Mostly, it’s a matter of reusing words, or parts of words, and transforming them into new products.

Creating words out of ‘tree’ and ‘shoe’

• One is to add things called “suffixes”, which are letters we add to the ends of words to change their meaning slightly.
• It’s also possible to combine whole words to make new ones.
• These types of words are called “compound words” — they are often written as two words (“apple tree”), but sometimes one (“shoelace”).
• This is when we mix words together (sometimes they’re called “frankenwords”, itself a blend of “Frankenstein” and “word”).

Treerific (“tree” has been squished with “terrific” to convey something wonderful that is related to trees)
Shoenicorn (“shoe” has been squished with “unicorn” to mean an unicorn with magical shoes)

• Words and parts of words can combine and recombine to create a never-ending number of new words.
• We can also build words from the first letters of other words.
• Finally, English is also a word pirate that steals words from other languages — more than 350 in fact.
• This term for this is “borrowing” — curious, because English has no intention of ever giving these words back!

Early examples of trees and shoes

• Okay, so what about the second part of the question: why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes?
• Here’s a very early example of “tree” from an ancient poem written more than a thousand years ago.

• This was spoken about 2,500 years ago, but unfortunately nothing survives of the language, or perhaps people weren’t into writing things down back then.
• We can go even further back in time to the grandparent of English — a language called “Proto-Indo-European”.

The very beginning of trees and shoes

• For centuries, people have wondered how words like “tree” and “shoe” were invented.
• There are lots of ideas around, but we’ll never know for sure because people have been speaking for more than 30,000 years.
• Remember what we could do earlier with just the two words “tree” and “shoe’!

Kate Burridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• But people killed them indiscriminately year-round – sometimes for their meat and feathers, but settlers also took turkey eggs from nests and poisoned adult turkeys to keep them from damaging crops.
• Thanks to this unregulated killing and habitat loss, by 1900 wild turkeys had disappeared from much of their historical range.
• Turkey populations gradually recovered over the 20th century, aided by regulation, conservation funding and state restoration programs.
• We are wildlife ecologists working to determine why turkey populations are shrinking in portions of their range.

Fewer open spaces

• While turkeys may appear at home in urban areas, their habitat is open forest – areas with sparse trees that allow near-full sunlight to reach herbaceous plants at ground level.
• In 1792, naturalist William Bartram described the eastern U.S. as “Grande Savane,” or big savanna, a landscape with abundant wild turkeys.
• The open spaces that are left often are not suitable for wild turkeys: They need a well-developed layer of vegetation at ground level that includes mainly wild flowers, native grasses and young shrubs and trees to provide cover for nesting and raising their young.
• Turkeys can persist in these denser, shaded forests, but they don’t reproduce as successfully, and fewer of their young survive.
• Over the past 50 years, populations of bird species that live in open forests and grasslands have fallen by more than 50%.

The roles of food, predators and hunting

• For example, blame is often placed on more abundant predators that eat turkey eggs, such as raccoons and opossums.
• But these predators probably are more abundant in part due to changes in turkey habitat.
• This suggests that prescribed fire across the wild turkey’s range creates an environment that’s more favorable for turkeys than for their predators.
• Lastly, some observers have proposed that the timing of hunting could be affecting turkey reproduction.

Creating space for turkeys

• Land owners can help by managing for native grasses and wildflowers on their property, which will provide breeding habitat for turkeys.
• We have produced podcast episodes that discuss which plants are valuable to turkeys and other wildlife, and how to promote and maintain plants that are turkey-friendly.

Marcus Lashley receives funding from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, the National Wild Turkey Federation, and Turkeys for Tomorrow. William Gulsby receives funding from the Alabama Wildlife Federation, Turkeys for Tomorrow and the National Wild Turkey Federation.

• New York City is poised to launch the first congestion pricing plan to reduce traffic in a major U.S. metropolitan area.
• Like many journeys in the Big Apple, this one has been punctuated by delays.
• Once the system starts up, however, it’s expected to significantly reduce gridlock in Manhattan and generate billions of dollars to improve public transit citywide.
• As an urban policy scholar, I’m looking forward to seeing New York’s plan go into effect.
• But given the heavy costs that traffic imposes on public health and productivity, I’m encouraged to see a major U.S. city finally test this approach.

Nudging drivers

• Congestion pricing is a response to externalities – costs or benefits that are generated by one party but incurred by another.
• Clogged city streets and air pollution are externalities created by urban car users, many of whom live outside the city.
• This approach is behind behavioral economics, the policy strategy of using “nudges” that preserve choice but encourage certain actions.

Public transit receives priority

• The New York plan was presented to the board of the Metropolitan Transit Authority in November 2023 after years of study and a detailed environmental impact assessment, required by federal law.
• It also would generate US$15 billion for capital improvements to the city’s public transit system, including making stations accessible for passengers with disabilities and buying new electric buses and commuter rail and subway cars.
• More than 75% of all trips into the central business district are made by public transit.

• Over several months of public hearings, the MTA heard both broad support for congestion pricing and thousands of requests for credits, discounts and exemptions, most of which were denied.
• The limited number of exemptions includes private commuter buses, school buses and city-owned vehicles, including emergency vehicles.
• New Jersey is suing the MTA, arguing among other things that the plan is unconstitutional because it burdens interstate commerce.

Starting the journey

• And how will commuters respond when they find that trains and subways initially are more crowded, before capital upgrades improve the system?
• But freedom for car users has imposed health and economic costs on millions of New Yorkers for many years.
• But if New York’s experiment succeeds, it could provide a model and valuable insights for other traffic-clogged U.S. cities.

John Rennie Short does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.