Holden Arboretum's hub connects landowners, forestry experts to preserve Ohio's tree canopy 15%
By Zaria Johnson15%
7/30/2026, 2:08:35 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Negativity Bias, and Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 15.6% saturation with 107 hits. Analysis detected 851 faulty-reasoning hits from 686 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 30.8% and a BS Rank of 15% (18,959 of 22,241 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 85.20% of the article peer group.
Forests have changed throughout 250 years of U.S. history, and experts at Holden Forests and Gardens are calling for more management to protect the remaining tree canopy.
Holden demonstrates the risk of letting forest management fall to the wayside at its 67-acre Working Woods site in Kirtland.
There, foresters use sections of the property to demonstrate what can happen if a forest goes unattended, be it an increase in invasive species populations, reduced wildlife habitat or watershed degradation.
"These forests, they're growing in sort of unnatural conditions where they're highly invaded ... and choked with invasive weeds, the soil may be poor, they're crowded," Holden Arboretum Consulting Forester Jessica Miller Mecaskey said.
"There are things that can be done to intervene to make them healthier."
Managing forests can help to avoid these ecological issues, Miller Mecaskey said.
But since 85% of Ohio's forests are privately owned, Holden is turning to landowners to make a help protect the state's tree canopy.
"Our challenge is to help them find the resources that they need in order to steward those lands well," Miller Mecaskey said.
"A lot of families own these properties for generations, or they decide to purchase land because of the beauty or the love of the outdoors.
So, we work with people to meet their goals, and it's possible to meet any goal and still have a healthy forest."
Holden connects landowners directly with foresters and uses the Working Woods to demonstrate how different forest management practices work.
Doing so allows the landowner to find ways to take better care of the trees on their properties, Holden CEO Ed Moydell said.
"That's part of what this Working Woods experiment is about," Moydell said "We can actually show people what it looks like when you do nothing.
You can show them what it look like when you remove invasives, when you plant good things.
We can show what it like when it looks like when your clear cut."
Holden has partnered with more than 60 private landowners through the Working Woods Hub, Moydell said.
While these landowners have been receptive to need of forest management on their properties, Moydell said overall awareness is still low.
"There's maybe a common misconception among sort of just an average person that if you leave the woods alone, everything will be okay," Moydell said.
"A lot of times, if you leave it alone, there's a lot stuff that'll grow in there that's not good for you, not good the forest, not good future generations.
So active management's really important."
Joe Lehman owns 14 acres in Brunswick Hills Township in Medina County.
Lehman let nature take its course on the property before he joined the Working Woods Hub last year.
Since then, he said he's realized that process does more harm than good.
"I got to understanding how these invasive species were really hurting the woods, and in turn, it's just such a big ripple effect of the condition of the woods," Lehman said.
"They've really given me the tools to have a better understanding of how to get some of that stuff under control and make it a healthier environment."
Lehman spent his first year preparing his management plan, and he said he's eager to get to work this fall.
"Had the woods not been tampered with to start with by man, then Mother Nature would have done a much better job," Lehman said.
"But they have been messed with and therefore we need to still continue to work with them."
Property owners can do small things to make sure their forests are managed and protected, according to Miller Mecaskey.
Step one is getting to know the woods.
"Whether that's identifying trees, identifying what might be the invasive species on your land," Miller Mecaskey said.
"No matter if you have an acre or less or a hundred acres, treating the invasive plants is key."
Once the invasive species are removed, Miller Mecaskey said, planting native plants on the property is an easy way to promote biodiversity throughout the forest.
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