Last quarter, a stump on the corner of the Green at the intersection of Main Street and West Wheelock Street became a bit of a campus sensation after a student fixed a Lorax plushie to it. Above the stuffed toy, a sign read the iconic words: “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.” The stunt was a fun example of our student body’s humor, but it may also have been trying to tell us something more. If the Lorax could speak for the Dartmouth trees, what would he say? His message might be pretty concerning.
After all, that stump had a story. It was once the towering “DeWitt Elm,” which had stood fast as a Hanover icon for well over a century, watching over countless moments in Dartmouth’s history. Sadly, the famed elm’s story ended last summer, when the Town of Hanover cut it down. To be sure, this was not just some brazen act — Dartmouth and the Town had done everything they could to preserve the tree, spending nearly $13,000 since 2010 to protect it. But the tree was rotting from the inside and posed a threat to passersby, and it had to come down.
The DeWitt Elm is only the most recent in a long line of felled American elms on Dartmouth’s campus — which have had to come down largely due to Dutch Elm Disease, an invasive fungus that has ravaged American elms since the early 20th century. The disease has rendered the American elm an endangered species and left only a fraction of the original elms standing on campus today. There was a time, though, when these stately giants covered our campus and town by the thousands, providing a surreal, forestlike canopy along the College’s streets. So strong were Dartmouth’s ties to the trees that it got the nickname “The College of a Thousand Elms.” Then, one by one, the College had to cut them down. By the 1980s, more than 200 had been lost. More recently, in 2022, we said goodbye to the giant elm that stood along Tuck Drive — one that continues to live on as the symbol of West House, having been immortalized in the residential community’s logo.
In the midst of these losses, there is only one solution: replant. The College has already done everything it can to preserve the already existing trees, but their deaths seem almost inevitable, a result of decades of disease. So, we need to shift our focus from preservation to restoration. Arborists have been hard at work developing new disease-resistant elm cultivars — varieties formed through selective breeding — with great success. Most of them have very high survival rates against Dutch Elm Disease. The College must take full advantage of these new cultivars to bring the elm back to our campus.
This is not a far-fetched proposal. Dartmouth’s own arborists have already been trying to do just that. Several young, disease-resistant elms have been planted on campus, notably along Tuck Drive. In 2007, the College planted a batch of nearly 30 disease-resistant elms. But, when the trees once numbered in the thousands, this progress seems piecemeal. These elms have had ample time to approach maturity, yet they still haven’t had, in my view, a significant impact on the campus environment. We still have a long way to go before campus today emulates the Dartmouth of the past. In other cases, the College has fallen short completely. After the West House elm was felled in 2022, a Dartmouth News article suggested the College might plant a replacement in 2023 — yet as of today, no replacement has sprouted up.
With a history so strongly linked to these trees, Dartmouth has a special responsibility to spare no expense in fighting to restore the species. Lining the streets with these trees, like we once did, would not only beautify Dartmouth’s campus but also go a long way toward helping save the American elm from endangerment. All the while, with the forestlike canopies above us, we would be reunited with our school motto, Vox Clamantis in Deserto, and truly feel like we’re in the wilderness once again.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
