What is your interest and motivation in serving for LEAF as a board member?
I was first introduced to LEAF by an in-person tree tour. The one-hour tour was filled with fascinating tree facts, which left me feeling inspired and awed. Trees are a critical part of a healthy ecosystem; their quiet presence alone improves our mental and physical wellbeing. Yet all of us have taken them for granted in one way or another. Having attended the tour and volunteered in tree planting events with LEAF, I am a strong believer in LEAF’s ability to outreach, educate, and motivate people of all ages to protect our urban forests and respect them as they deserve. I decided to serve LEAF as a board member to help ensure LEAF’s continuing success in realizing its vision.
What experience do you bring?
I’m a chartered professional accountant with over 13 years of experience in audit and taxation. I have worked with corporations of all sizes, and more recently, as in-house tax counsel. These experiences gave me a good understanding of how financial processes and systems should work, as well as cross-functional knowledge in the fields of law, human resources, and information technology.
What do you see as some of the most pressing issues facing urban forests?
I once stumbled across an online commentary - “imagine if trees gave off wi-fi signals, we would be planting so many trees and we'd probably save the planet too. Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe.” This highlights the issue clearly for me. People take trees for granted as it is difficult to observe the immediate tangible benefit of their presence, and even harder to perceive the gradual negative consequences of their absence. As a result, urban forest stewardship is a severely underfunded initiative. The shortage in funding means inadequate maintenance to ensure the longevity of existing canopies, and insufficient advocacy to protect older canopies from being clear cut. The climate change resulting from the loss of trees, among other human-induced degradations to our natural world, further exacerbates the deterioration in ecosystem health for trees and humans alike, creating a vicious cycle.
The role that LEAF plays in addressing this issue is both direct and indirect.
Directly, our tree planting programs help to replace the loss of urban forest canopy and our certified arborists who consult on every planting ensure the long-term success of our trees – one cannot underestimate the value of planting the right thing in the right place and LEAF champions this.
Indirectly, LEAF’s education and planting initiatives inspire people to learn more about the importance and needs of a healthy urban forest, and foster a community of like-minded individuals to spread the message to others. This is significant because this issue is one for all of us – not just LEAF - to address. LEAF is an organization that brings people together for the good, and I am excited to be a part of its progress.
Erin MacDonald is the Acting Executive Director at LEAF.
Ying Qu is an Urban Forest Champion - someone who has made a positive impact on our urban forest through their professional, volunteer or personal efforts.
Read more our Urban Forest Champion blog series here.