THE TERMINATOR HAS ARRIVED

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

We have all seen these machines at work. If not, we know they have been there. Massacred remains of what once were roadside trees. Branches strewn everywhere, mangled remains of limbs still attached high in the trees, and shattered stubs. It is the latest in an effort to employ fence to fence clearance along our highways without lifting a finger, except a lever from within the comfort of a cab.

Last month, one wandered off the highways in Prince Edward County and explored a section of the 52 kilometre Millennium Trail, a former CN railway line that stretches from Carrying Place to Picton. It is a multi use trail and, in theory, management should address the needs and concerns of all those who use it. However a mind set sees it as an ATV trail although any time I have walked the trail - and I have walked its entire length several times - clearly indicates far more hikers than ATVers. Yet, in this latest assault on the trail, and there was one earlier in the trail’s history that created a mild furore among hikers, but brushed off as tree huggers over reacting, was done with no thought of consequences in the peak breeding season, or that an offer had been made by a volunteer group to brush back this troublesome stretch manually. Never in my years of walking multi use trails - and I have walked several including portions of the Trans Canada - have I witnessed such disregard for the basic philosophy of what a trail should represent.

Many refer to these powerful machines as "Bush Hogs". However, the name is actually a misnomer, and has suffered under the same unfortunate misuse as has the name Skidoo through the years. Industrial rotary mowers are manufactured by a number of companies, including Bush Hog. In recent years, they have been modified to maintain road allowances along highways and secondary roads, and are more accurately known as boom mowers. When used as a mower it does an admirable job of cutting grass, thick brush and small trees that may be encroaching the highway.

The machine’s excellent points are certainly offset by its modification to be hydraulically lifted vertically and used on offending overhanging branches. Because the overhanging branches have no stability, they are unceremoniously shattered, torn, stripped and hacked into a mangled mess. In some cases, these branches of mature trees, some of them several inches in thickness are mangled due to some mythical menace many metres in off the highway.

However, it isn’t only in eastern Ontario where this machine has destroyed the very roadside beauty that many municipalities are trying to promote to encourage tourism in their areas. Letters to the editor in a Greensboro, North Carolina newspaper last year were not very charitable in their comments about the ability of this machine to flail branches from high trees. While little was said against the machine’s ability to keep roadside brush from the shoulders of highways, it was a different matter when the hydraulics came into play, and the machine stood erect with it powerful blades grinding into the sides of trees. "It makes me sad, embarrassed and angry," wrote one irate North Carolina observer, "that there is so little regard for trees, which make up so much of the natural beauty along our roadsides."

It seems peculiar that in some areas, even along the same major highway sometimes, ornamental trees are planted to enhance roadside beauty, while just down the highway, a fence to fence clearance policy is employed at any expense. As many trees succumb to their injuries and others remain shattered and skeletal remains of themselves, it likely isn’t the most endearing welcome that tourists have to eastern Ontario when they arrive. We can’t criticize efforts, of course, to maintain roadsides in an effort to improve visibility to motorists, but one has to wonder if the mangling we see along so many of our highways isn’t just the result of an over zealous operator wanting to see how much thickness he can successfully penetrate and how far the severed limbs will fly.

One is tempted to ask which is the lesser of two evils, the blackened waste from toxic brush sprays that were traditionally used to control roadside growth in the 1960s, or the mangled mess we see today under the guise of roadside management. Moreover, is it necessary that we be forced to choose between such extremes? Surely there must be a compromise where encroaching brush and tall grass may still be cut, and overhanging branches and trees several metres off the highway can continue to provide something more interesting than shattered skeletons.

As for the Millennium Trail, except for finishing a scheduled interpretive hike there this year, you aren’t apt to see me on it again anytime soon, for it is not a multi use trail, as it is purported to be. It is, and always will be, an ATV highway, and hikers, bikers and horse back riders be damned.