Clearcutting in Nashville: What Is It, and Why Does It Happen?
Clearcutting, or clearing an area of its standing trees, is a major environmental concern in Nashville and throughout Tennessee. When we remove trees from forested land, it significantly changes the ecology and environment of an area, with consequences for how that place can manage weather and pollution, host wildlife, and be hospitable to public health.
While tree removal is unavoidable in some cases, regulations and standards attempt to prevent clearcutting as a practice that’s generally harmful to wooded places, both urban and rural. Here, we’ll take a look at the impacts of clearcutting and how it affects Nashville communities. Toward the end, we’ll share some ways Nashville residents can push back against irresponsible clearcutting activities in our city and across Tennessee.
What Is Clearcutting?
Clearcutting refers to the removal of most or all of the trees in an area at once. Area-wide clearings might occur for various reasons:
Construction of buildings or hard surface cover
Installation of utilities
Opening up land for agriculture
Logging, mining, or quarrying
Area-wide pest or disease infections
Wildfire cleanup
In the Nashville area, clearcutting is mostly driven by development and land-use changes, with some major clearing being attributed to invasive pests. Whether it’s a necessary removal or not, clearcutting has real impacts on the environment.
The Importance of Standing Trees
Clearcutting trees in Nashville, while not as widespread as in more rural areas, still presents significant challenges due to the city's rapid urbanization, development, and expansion. In naturally wooded areas, mature trees are essential green infrastructure that provide foundational ecosystem services:
Temperature Moderation: Big trees create shade, absorb air pollutants, and release moisture, all of which help reduce the impacts of heat in an area.
Soil Stability: Extensive root systems help hold soil in place, reducing erosion on both sloping and flat land.
Flood Control: Forested spaces absorb and slow down rainwater, reducing the risk of flooding in urban and rural areas.
Water Quality: Trees filter runoff and reduce sediment and pollutants from reaching rivers and streams, helping maintain clean water.
Wetland Stability: Tree roots stabilize the soil around lakes, rivers, and wetlands, helping these ecosystems retain water and maintain their natural shape.
Biodiversity and Wildlife Habitat: Canopy ecosystems support diverse plant life, providing essential food and shelter for a wide variety of animals.
Carbon Storage: Trees absorb and store carbon dioxide, helping to reduce greenhouse gases and slow the effects of climate change.
It’s hard to overstate the value of big, old trees across an area: mature specimens hold exponentially more ecosystem value than younger trees due to the much larger magnitude of the services they provide. They also represent decades of growth that can’t be readily replaced. Young trees are important, too, but especially because they grow into the big trees that, in aggregate, make up a robust canopy ecosystem.
Nashville and its surrounding region, which is a naturally wooded area, rely on its mature trees to produce these various ecosystem services for it to be a comfortable, healthy place to live. Efforts are being made to address clearcutting and its effects through zoning laws, conservation programs, and sustainable development practices, but it remains a significant environmental concern.
Clearcutting In Nashville
As Nashville builds and expands, preserving mature trees and planting new ones are critical to maintaining the area’s canopy ecosystem and its many essential benefits. In recent years, Nashville has experienced several significant tree removal and clearcutting events, some of which have been necessary, while others sparked public controversy.
For example, over the past decade, thousands of ash trees have been removed in Nashville due to the emerald ash borer. The green beetle was first detected in Davidson County in 2014 and has since caused significant damage to the city's ash tree population. It is expected that thousands more will be removed in the coming years.
In 2019, the NFL Draft event in Nashville was met with resistance over the planned removal of 21 ornamental cherry trees along First Avenue. Nashville Tree Conservation Corps played a pivotal role in advocating for these trees, organizing a petition that garnered over 80,000 signatures and drawing national attention to the issue. The NFL agreed to relocate the trees intact and replant them within the city, in addition to planting 238 new cherry trees across Nashville.
In 2023, a land-clearing company working in North Nashville inadvertently destroyed a bald eagle nest that held two eaglets. The canopy tree containing the nest was removed by a construction crew working on a nearby development site. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency responded promptly; the nest had been destroyed, but the eaglets were later found unharmed.
Clearcutting in the Highland Rim Forest
The Highland Rim Forest surrounding Nashville is increasingly threatened by development pressures as the city expands into surrounding natural areas. These centuries-old forests are ecologically rich, supporting diverse wildlife, protecting water sources, and helping to regulate the climate.
Clearcutting of this vital ecosystem affects Nashville directly by increasing flood risk, lowering water quality, and reducing natural cooling and carbon storage, making the city more vulnerable to climate and environmental stressors. The Alliance to Conserve Nashville’s Highland Rim Forest, a coalition of local organizations and citizens, is actively working to protect and connect these forests through conservation easements and strategic land acquisitions.
Pushing Back Against Clearcutting
If you’re interested in taking action against clearcutting in Nashville and Tennessee as a whole, residents have several options to make their voices heard:
Support local advocacy groups by volunteering and/or making a donation to contribute to their focused organizational efforts.
Contact local officials by emailing or calling Metro Council members, the mayor’s office, and state representatives to support legislation that limits clearcutting.
Attend environmental community group meetings to voice opposition to developments that harm public green spaces.
Share information with friends and family about the importance of preserving and caring for trees.
Tree care across a large area is difficult, and it takes the efforts of lots of people in lots of places! When we work together, canopy care becomes a more robust activity with more consequential results, such as limiting clearcutting practices and resulting impacts as much as possible.
Taking Care of Our City’s Neighborhood Trees
Homeowners can make their own contributions to the city’s canopy by planting trees, working with a certified arborist for expert care of standing trees, and keeping their property’s landscape in well-maintained condition. If you have a particularly large, mature tree, consider registering it with the Metro Nashville Historic & Specimen Trees Program for a layer of protection on that specimen from indiscriminate removal that may threaten it in the future.
If you have space to plant a tree, browse the Nashville Tree Conservation Corps’ tree sale for below-retail prices on high-quality trees. If you don’t have space, consider donating a tree for us to plant in an opportune space somewhere in Nashville, or sign up as a volunteer to help us plant one!
We also accept financial donations, which make up an important portion of NTCC’s operating funds, allowing us to conduct the on-the-ground work that promotes, preserves, protects, and plants Nashville’s canopy. We’re passionate about this work, and we appreciate your support!
Subscribe to our email newsletter, and check out our Linktree page for more NTCC content.