Needham is finally setting out to tackle the complex issue of trees — in particular, whether private property owners, including developers, should feel a responsibility to preserve larger and older trees.
“This has been an issue on the table for a really long time,” said Select Board member Heidi Frail, chair of the newly germinated Tree Preservation Committee, which met for the first time on March 6. Frail said a tree committee was formed in 2016, but it didn’t bear fruit. Neither did an attempt to hold a tree summit in 2023.
“Our broad goal is to find a way to regulate and preserve trees for the future,” said Frail.
Wellesley, Newton and Brookline have all adopted bylaws that have discouraged the removal of mature, healthy and noninvasive trees on private property.
“Currently, Needham has few ways to protect trees outside of designated wetland areas,” Frail said. “We rely on the Massachusetts General Law governing public shade trees, but we don’t have any rules about people taking down private trees.”
Frail said regulation of private trees is “a thorny issue,” but she believes the public’s understanding of the communal aspect of private trees has grown.
The complexity of tree policy is reflected in the wide range of interests represented on the 11-member committee. The Planning Board, the Climate Action Committee, the Stormwater Working Group, the Conservation Commission and the Large House Review Study Committee all have representatives on this new committee. Curt Petrini, a Needham-based developer, and Nick Tatar, a local builder, are also part of the committee. Erica Bond, a certified master gardener, was elected co-chair. Ed Olsen, Needham’s tree warden, and Katie King from the town manager’s office are nonvoting members.
“There are a lot of communities in Massachusetts that talk about trees but very few have bylaws,” Olsen said at the meeting. He explained that among the communities that do have bylaws, many have found that developers choose to cut down mature trees and pay fees. The fees go into a town fund to plant saplings, but old growth, the mature canopy, is lost for generations.
“We’ve seen a lot of homes get built,” Olsen said, “and not a lot of trees get replaced in those new landscapes.”
Many committee members expressed a desire to find methods that will not require the town to commit resources to collecting fees and monitoring compliance.
Frail said she hopes the committee will try to incorporate incentives in addition to possible bylaws.
Frail cited an instance last summer when a large shade tree on Manning Street was damaged by developers, and the town was forced to take it down. “If the town could have gotten involved earlier, we could have avoided this situation,” she said.
In the postwar suburban housing boom, a lot of Needham’s current mature trees were planted, and most of them were oak trees. “A lot of oak trees that were planted at the same time are now reaching the end of their lifespan at the same time,” Frail said. This adds to the issue’s urgency. Frail pointed out that the town provides free saplings for Needham homeowners to plant on their property.
The members of the committee have terms that run through 2026, but Frail hopes that some decisions can be implemented before then. In the meantime, the committee will branch out into subcommittees to assemble the breadth of information that is needed.
Frail said the committee needs to learn more about Needham’s canopy, about the bylaws in other towns and how they have fared, and about the processes that developers go through. The committee itself faces a long process before it can issue its findings to the Select Board.
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