A Sustainable Montclair CampaignAugust 2026

Plant Tomorrow'sCanopy Today.

Roughly eighty percent of Montclair's ground is privately owned — residents can ensure that a child today has a climate resilient town tomorrow.

The trees in the photographs below were planted a long time ago by residents like you. Slide the handle in each picture to imagine what Montclair would feel like without them. Help ensure these images never become reality. Plant a tree this fall.

Treeless Montclair

Let's make sure the “after” in these photos stays in our imagination

Fourteen Montclair locations, photographed this year. Drag the handle in each picture to see what our town looks like without trees.

A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
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A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›
A Montclair street with its mature trees removed
The same Montclair street, shaded by mature trees
‹›

Every photograph here was taken by Sustainable Montclair — thirteen in August 2026, and the bare-branched comparison in December 2025. In each pair, the version without trees is a digital simulation of the same view.

Why This Matters

What we are losing, and why it won't wait

−2,133 Net canopy lossTrees removed against real replacements, 2020–2025, from our own records request.
~80% Privately ownedMontclair's land — and with it, most of Montclair's canopy.
40% Where cooling acceleratesBlock-scale canopy above which daytime summer cooling jumps. Montclair sits below it.
436 Caterpillar speciesFed by a single group of trees — the oaks — in our region.

Montclair is losing trees faster than it replaces them. Most of our canopy stands on private land, which means the Township cannot plant its way out of this alone. And the big trees in these photographs were planted decades ago — many at the same time, which means many will die around the same time. That doesn't bode well for our climate resiliency.

We can fix this by planting today for tomorrow.

Canopy-loss figures from The Vanishing Canopy, Sustainable Montclair's analysis of 1,464 Chapter 324 removal permits obtained under OPRA, 2020–2025. Cooling threshold: Ziter, Pedersen, Kucharik & Turner, PNAS 116(15), 2019 — daytime summer temperatures at block scale in Madison, Wisconsin. Caterpillar figures: National Wildlife Federation keystone plant list for Ecoregion 8, from research by Dr. Doug Tallamy. Every treeless image on this page is a digital simulation of the photograph beside it.

Sustainable Montclair · sustainablemontclair@gmail.com · 2026