Saturday, April 5, 2008

How and why people kill trees

Workers for the city Department of Parks and Recreation came and cleaned the salt up, but when more of it appeared two weeks later, spread around the bases of the same three trees but, like before, not spread onto the sidewalk surrounding them, it seemed to remove all doubt.

Mr. Dutton and the Parks Department are treating it as a case of attempted arborcide, to use a term popularized by Henry J. Stern, the department’s former commissioner.

In particular, the current parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe said, it has been known to happen when someone does not like a tree blocking something, like a store or a sign, or some other private property.


Arborcide, He Wrote

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hang the perp by his thumbs
from the very same tree he just
tried to kill!

Let the punishment fit the crime!

Now that would be quite a deterrent
to discourage future lawbreaking.

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of a dim witted neighbor a few doors down. One of those guys who's always 'improving' his house. He had a medium sized tree that he just kept pruning until it was almost one branch. He also cemented the sidewalk around it so it had a tiny 18" plot. Its leaves turned a lovely shade of red in the fall however. But one day when a woodpecker had spent 2 days making a perfect 2" diameter hole for its nest near the top - entertaining and educating several kids - he cut the tree down. Sweeping the leaves was too much work and sweeping a handful of sawdust for a day was too much work. That's a level of ignorance that can't be cured and needs legislation to treat.

Anonymous said...

Sweeping the leaves was too much work and sweeping a handful of sawdust for a day was too much work. That's a level of ignorance that can't be cured and needs legislation to treat.

Our community board actually defends people that cut down trees. It stand in the way of development.

CB 1, the community board from hell.

Anonymous said...

I think that when people apply for building permits to otherwise crap-i-fy their homes, there should be a requirement that they plant and maintain trees on their property - the number of trees based on the size of the crap.

Bloomberg wants a million trees in NYC? Start here. Judging by the crap in Howard Beach alone, you're a quarter of the way there already.

Anonymous said...

Something to that affect was proposed for future developments, that all larger projects must plant trees in front of the property, and the front yards cannot be paved over. I think something like half will have to remain grass.