Neighbors in the McKinley Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side and environmental advocates used a sunny Saturday morning to participate in a neighborhood walk showcasing the importance of tree lined communities in combating air pollution.
The Bilingual Tree Walk served as one of many celebrations honoring Openlands’s 60-year mission of preserving clean air and water for northeastern Illinois and its surrounding communities.
As about 30 people strolled through the community, passing families doing yoga and playing pickup basketball, Openlands staff member and “treekeeper” Al Dereu answered the public’s questions about the history of the region’s trees and their impact today.
TreeKeepers like Dereu are part of a 30-year-old Openlands program designed to teach individuals about how to care for their trees in their communities. Conservation groups like Openlands promote planting trees in cities as a way of combating poor urban air quality. Experts say that trees reduces heat in city neighborhoods by absorbing carbon dioxide and reduce flooding by soaking up rainwater.
Throughout the tour, treekeepers guided attendees to understand the impact that unlikely partnerships can have in caring for the environment. “We’re not going to solve climate change tomorrow,” Dereu said. “We’re not going to solve it next week or next year even. So we have to play the long game and we have to work with people who don’t believe in the value of trees the way we do.”
While talking about climate change from a big-picture lens, the morning tree walk did not disregard the recent weather events that have had a direct impact on Chicagoans day-to-day lives.
Just two weeks after Chicago briefly earned the title of the world’s worst air quality due to smoke from Canadian wildfires, Openlands called attention to the positive impacts that planting trees can have on a region’s air.
Hours before the walk, the National Weather Service on Saturday warned of haze and poor air quality due to wildfire smoke and particulate matter.
Armed with protective sun hats and a keen focus on the intricacies of the nature around them, attendees Nicholas Efrosinis and Tony Adams made their way toward McKinley Park’s community garden.
“This is the lungs for our community,” Efrosinis said, gesturing to the surrounding trees, many younger than five years old. Each tree, he said, made a small contribution to improving the air quality. “This is how you clean air,” he said.
Both had spent time volunteering with the tree planting efforts in McKinley Park. “(The trees) benefit all of us. It’s only fair that we help,” Adams said.
One notable feature of this nature walk was its language accessibility, offered in both English and Spanish. Daniella Pereira, Openlands’ vice president of community conservation, Daniella Pereira, expressed excitement about the increasing bilingual education opportunities in the city.
“We are doing some translation in bilingual education in Spanish, but there are so many other communities — the Polish community, Arabic, Chinese — that want to have the same ability to understand and get involved,” she said. “And so our hope is that there will be so many more groups that will start translating.”
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Some attendees said they walked away with a newfound optimism about the passionate care for the city’s trees. “It was just cool to learn that organizations like this exist — that people in the city actually care about it,” said tour walker Daniel Kummer.
Tour attendee Amanda Schonfeld said the nature walk inspired her to have push conversations on the importance of trees in the city following an incident where a neighbor who chopped down a magnolia tree because “he just couldn’t stand having to deal with all the blossoms.”
“I know people sometimes get annoyed by trees,” she said. “I think from all the things I learned today, maybe I could have a more meaningful conversation with people (and say) ‘hold on, you might want to reconsider that,’”.
While the community walk educated community members about the trees that cleans their air and decorates their streets, Pereira said it’s really about encouraging the city’s residents to get outside and connect with the world around them.
“Once you’re connected to the nature of your neighborhood it’s hard to avoid seeing things like an asphalt plant starting in your neighborhood or somebody coming in and taking down trees in your neighborhood,” Pereira said. “And it will then push people to start advocating for what they see is right.”
“Everybody can get involved,” Dereu said. “Your 12-year-old son or daughter and your 70-year-old grandparents can all make a difference.”
