Arborists are specialists dedicated to the health and longevity of trees. We meet one who grew up in India’s eco-village of Auroville, known for its reforestation initiatives, and turned his childhood love of forests into a profession.
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00:00They look like lumberjacks, kitted out with heavy chainsaws, harnesses, fuel canisters
00:08and helmets. But rather than felling trees, these men are on a mission to save them.
00:16Here in the South Indian township of Auroville, every tree counts. That's why a homegrown
00:22team of experts tends to its greenery.
00:25When I was young, my father had a friend who was starting to build tree houses. So as a
00:31sample they built one in our backyard. There's such a different view and experience that
00:38you get being up there and feeling the wind blowing on you and feeling the breath of the
00:43tree. That's something I feel to this very day.
00:46Bhagirath Prakash cares for Auroville's trees together with Jonas Sushanik, the founder
00:52of maintenance company Tree Care. They both grew up here and witnessed the community's
00:57reforestation efforts turn this once barren region to a lush green landscape. The transformation
01:04instilled in them a love for nature, which they turned into a career.
01:09The profession arborist or arboriculture, it comes from the Latin word arbor, which
01:17is tree. And so we are tree professionals. We are, I think, how I see it is that we provide
01:27a bridge between nature and our urban environment.
01:33In the last decade, the state of Tamil Nadu, where Auroville is located, has lost thousands
01:38of trees to cyclones. These are growing more frequent due to human-induced climate change.
01:43A powerful storm in 2011 wreaked havoc in resident Agathe Fokweze's yard. She was distraught
01:50by the thought of having to fell her favourite tree.
01:53It was during the cyclone. In the morning, all the garden, it was completely destroyed.
02:03And I am going to the swimming pool to check how is it. And I saw this tree, who was completely
02:14cutting in two parts. And I say, it was very large. You know, you see that? It's grown
02:22from 2011. And it is there. It was the same. It was completely open there. From there,
02:32completely at the end. It's for me absolutely impossible to imagine we have to cut this
02:39tree.
02:41Luckily, the experts at Tree Care had a solution.
02:44We did our research. We try and figure out what's the best way of going about it. And
02:50we finally settled on a bracing method that is quite popular also in Europe, using threaded
02:57rods. We actually drilled through the entire tree with a really long drill bit and inserted
03:08a threaded rod, created some metal plates to basically force that closure again.
03:20But even with their best efforts, arborists can't save every tree. They typically come
03:25into the picture once it is already affected by illness or damage.
03:31Even though trees can be surprisingly adaptive in urban environments, they are often susceptible
03:36to disease and root damage.
03:39Arlen Lascaux is an Auroville-based arborist specialised in the management of urban trees.
03:45He advocates preserving mature trees in new building developments.
03:50I am actually going and looking at the trees on the site to look at how long these trees,
03:55each individual tree will be there for. I plot them on a map so that it can be integrated
04:00in architects' drawing. They're all geo-located. We're looking at their health, looking at
04:05their condition, their structural condition. We're looking at how rare they are, how old
04:10they are, how long they are going to be there for, how much longer they're going to be there
04:14for. And based on all of these factors, you can essentially grade them.
04:19This approach helps boost urban green trees' resilience to the stresses of a changing climate
04:24such as drought, as well as to pollution and a loss of biodiversity in the urban ecosystem.
04:30Auroville's tree doctors are always on the lookout for early warning signs of stress.
04:35Here's another clear sign that this tree is dying back. All these shoots are actually
04:41from the same tree. It's coming from the roots. And these are stress shoots. As the top of
04:47the tree, the canopy is dead, it needs to find a new source of energy. And so it's shooting
04:54out all these new epichromic shoots in a last-ditch attempt to create a new canopy for itself.
05:01Tree Care trains aspiring arborists, teaching them how to adapt scientific techniques used
05:05in different parts of the world to local conditions. It's Jonas Sushanik's hope that this new crop
05:11of practitioners will help spread a sensitive approach to tree maintenance well beyond the
05:17treetops of Auroville.