IU’s campus showcases beautiful trees, but at this time of year, the university cuts some of them down.
According to IU Landscape Services, it's routine and timed to minimize disruption during the academic year.
IU Landscape Services Leader Trent Chitwood said his department monitors trees through an online GIS tree inventory database.
“We had a really hard winter, and these were trees that were honestly struggling,” Chitwood said.
“They didn't leaf out. A few of them had a few live leaves but weren't really safe to keep around.”
Maple, honey locust and bradford pear are the tree species being removed.
The majority of maple trees being removed are on the sides of streets. According to Chitwood, they live in a stressful environment on campus.
The pavement around them, urban pollutants, water runoff from the street and salt from snow removal activities impacts the health of maple trees, Chitwood said.
Honey locust trees at the campus have struggled in recent years.
“They generally do well with urban stress factors, but at some point, they do succumb to that,” Chitwood said.
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The bradford pear is being logged intentionally because they are invasive.
It is not in the list of banned 44 species for the landscaping trade. But for the last few years, invasive species experts and organizations like the Indiana Invasive Species Council are warning that these trees are becoming highly invasive.
Heather Reynolds, professor of biology at IU, researches plant-environment interaction. The bradford pear, she said, appears to have a wide range of conditions it can tolerate.
“It doesn't really get attacked as much as native plants do and it has all of these characteristics that allow it to grow rapidly, you know, reproduce and spread itself,” she said.
Read more: DNR Encourages Public Not To Plant Bradford Pear Trees
IU has almost 13,000 trees on campus, including 40 to 50 invasive bradford pears. This is the second year of a three-year plan to remove them. Up to 20 bradford trees need to be cut down by next year.
“And so, this is IU wanting to do its part and get them out of here before they cause any more trouble and get them replaced with something that's going to be much better for the long term,” Chitwood said.
Landscape Services not only removes trees but also plants to offset it.
“Our new plantings are almost always offsetting what we remove, by far, that's always a goal that we're going to maintain,” Chitwood said.
The landscaping team plants around 200 to 300 trees annually. Oak, black gum, sweet gum varieties are the top choice to plant in areas where trees were removed.