342 replies to this topic

[rmpeers]

My takeaway from all this is that maybe our local government should stop meddling in municipal affairs.

[Nparker]

My takeaway from all this is that maybe our local government should stop meddling in municipal affairs.

And provincial affairs, federal affairs, corporate matters and global issues.

[aastra]

March 1, 2019 - New York Times: Goodbye, Sidewalk Trees:

 

 

Facing expensive upkeep costs when towering trees cause sidewalk hazards, some suburban towns opt to uproot them entirely.

...West Orange is grappling with a problem faced by communities around the country. Street trees planted decades — and in some cases, a century — ago were not ideal species for a paved environment and are now large, mature and in need of maintenance. With little soil available beneath the sidewalk, roots interfere with drainage systems, and buckle concrete. Utility companies aggressively prune tree limbs away from power lines, leaving awkward, and potentially unstable, V-shaped trees.“We’ve created a system that is not healthy for trees,”

https://www.nytimes....walk-trees.html

 

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March 3, 2019 - Councillor wants to plant improvements in Saanich’s tree protection bylaw
 

 

Last month, municipal crews cut down six Garry oak trees on Finnerty Road as part of an infrastructure project, despite protests from residents...

...loss in both urban and rural areas of Saanich appears "inevitable."

"This is particularly true in Saanich, where narrow road widths and undeveloped boulevards often constrain space available to service, renew or enhance underground or above ground infrastructure without impacting the landscape,"

 

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February 28, 2019 - Allegan, Michigan to remove 70 trees ASAP for sidewalk additions for schools

 

 

Allegan City Council authorized the removal of more than 70 trees in the city to secure sidewalks for the Safe Routes to School program and road construction...

"While a lot are small ones, there are some 50-inches in diameter on Delano Street."

The trees need to be cut down before March 31, because that’s when the endangered Indiana bat will be roosting and their habitat will no longer be able to be disturbed.

 

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This one is from January in Bellingham:

January 18, 2019 - They presented a public safety risk, so they had to go

 

 

...123 London Plane trees are coming out. But don’t worry, Public Works is planning to replace them with new trees.

Replacing the trees is part of the city’s Roeder Avenue Overlay project to resurface the street from the Whatcom Waterway bridge to Squalicum Parkway, including buffered bicycle lanes in each direction and replacing the sidewalks...

...it was decided to remove the trees, modify the wells, repair the sidewalks and install new trees, this time planting Black Tupelo, Pacific Sunset Maple and Ginko Biloba...

Read more here: https://www.bellingh...e224703910.html

 

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Urban tree canopy in Los Angeles is at risk:

 

 

...since 2000, many neighborhoods in the LA region have seen a tree canopy reduction of 14 to 55 percent...

In recent years, the city’s street trees have taken a hit. According to permits filed with the city of Los Angeles’s street services bureau, 263 street trees—including the 18 on the 1200 block of North Cherokee—are slated to be ripped out in the first five months of this year alone for sidewalk repairs and street widening.

...the city’s push to repair sidewalks has accelerated the loss of hundreds of mature trees...

Santa Monica is facing a lot of the same challenges when it comes to trees and development, says Matthew Wells, the city’s urban forester. But he estimates that the city loses very few trees through removal—"only a handful per year."

https://la.curbed.co...removal-climate

 

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Chopping mature urban & suburban trees ASAP has suddenly become mission #1 in communities everywhere, regardless of how old the communities happen to be or what types of trees they happen to have. And -- except in Santa Monica, for some reason -- there's no room whatsoever for innovative solutions. The chopping needs to happen and it needs to happen right now.

Edited by aastra, 04 March 2019 - 12:40 PM.

[Mike K.]

In addition to Bellewood’s two lowrise buildings – one of which will be built out of concrete while the other a woodframe – and its row of heritage-inspired townhomes, 83 new trees will be added to the property for a total of 125 trees on-site, eight of which will be mature Garry oaks retained during construction.

 

 

- https://victoria.cit...-gets-underway/

[On the Level]

Chopping mature urban & suburban trees ASAP has suddenly become mission #1 in communities everywhere, regardless of how old the communities happen to be or what types of trees they happen to have. And -- except in Santa Monica, for some reason -- there's no room whatsoever for innovative solutions. The chopping needs to happen and it needs to happen right now.

 

I can understand if you have a connection to a particular tree in your neighbourhood, but in general whats wrong with removing or replacing trees? 

 

You indirectly do that yourself when you ship something in a cardboard box, use the bathroom, purchase a piece of furniture etc etc.  Very little is 100% recycled.

 

Virtually all of the southern island has been logged 2 to 3 times.  I'm not suggesting we go that far, but when you go hiking in our forests you'll notice all of the stumps from when it was logged. 

 

Removing a tree is temporary.

[Victoria Watcher]

Cherry trees safe for now as Vancouver watches effect of climate change on urban forest

https://www.cbc.ca/n...hange-1.5078684

 

The City of Vancouver has no plans to stop planting cherry trees even though there's concern the iconic trees don't fare well in the warmer and drier weather conditions B.C. has faced in recent years.

 

The cherry trees, not native to the South Coast, are the runaway stars of spring with their pink blossoms.

 

•  

Gandha said Vancouver's plan with cherry trees is to replace those that die, or plant new ones in locations where they can be expected to do well.

 

'Doing fine right now'

"They're doing fine right now, so we're not too overly concerned but we'll continue to monitor them, but [they're] no different than other species that we have in the city as well," he said.

 

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 31 March 2019 - 04:08 PM.

[aastra]

 

...in general whats wrong with removing or replacing trees?

 

In general trees would get removed or replaced, for sure. Development does happen, trees do get old or sick, trees do get damaged by storms or lightning, sometimes road widening is justified, sometimes changes to a park & its pathways are justified, etc.

 

And as we all know, it sucks when mature trees need to be cut, because trees take a human lifetime to return to glory.

 

But it's the very sudden & urgent "need" for various levels of government to remove prominent/beautifying/healthy trees in a thousand different locales that I'm trying to shine some light on here. People might think I'm kidding or something. Just widen your awareness a bit and I promise you, your skepticism wouldn't last through the night. You'll see countless "local" stories and countless "local" crises that seem to be based on the same template. You'll often see the very same ironic observation: "Our politicians in [insert community here] are supposed to be such dedicated environmentalists, so why are they doing this?"

 

In this next story from the UK, note the quotation marks around "beautiful". Note the absence of quotation marks around "road improvements". What a dutiful reporter. No doubt somebody claimed that the flowering trees were beautiful, hence the quotation marks. Whereas road improvements by the state are an unquestionable fact, as everybody surely knows.

 

March 28, 2019 - Residents fear 'beautiful' trees will be chopped down as blue crosses suddenly appear on trunks

 

 

Residents in east Hull fear "beautiful" cherry trees may be chopped down after they have been marked with blue crosses.

A number of trees along the road have been painted on, leaving residents worried they could be felled due to major road improvements in the area.

Hull City Council confirmed in 2017 that £7.5m would be spent to help ease traffic flow at the Stoneferry Corridor.



pic from https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk

 

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March 11, 2019 - West Sacramento Is Planning To Cut Down 100 Trees For Public Safety

 

 

...the city thinks 151 of the tallows, marked with orange Xs, must be chopped down to protect the public. But some neighbors oppose the plan.

“The trees are finally mature, provide shade if I look they finally look nice and now they’re tearing them out,” said Robert Hernandez.

The city says it must be done to protect public safety. They plan on planting replacement trees for the Chinese Tallows, which are not even on the city’s approved tree list.

 

 

Older story from West Sacramento:

 

 

Several Tallow trees will soon be removed and replaced on Linden Road due to damage to the sidewalk and gutter. The City will replace 63 Chinese Tallow trees  with 63 more compatible Golden Rain Trees including root barriers.

 

Every city everywhere planted the wrong trees, and they all need to be chopped now in the late 2010s.

Edited by aastra, 02 June 2023 - 01:45 PM.

[Nparker]

 

...Our politicians...are supposed to be such dedicated environmentalists, so why are they doing this?...

So if mature tree removal is a global conspiracy, what is the end game?

[aastra]

I'm certainly no mind reader, but the pattern would seem to be evident. Earlier in one of these threads I noted how our cities are so incredibly green now (I linked to some aerials of Toronto). It should be pretty clear that many cities simply can't get significantly greener than they currently are. Most of the good work has already been done. Thus, I'm wondering if we're embarking on a phase of deliberate reversal (to some degree at least), so that the solutions (planting trees, greening programs, new taxes, etc.) can be implemented all over again. If anyone has been reading my posts in the thread "The more Victoria changes, the more it stays the same..." they should get the gist of what I'm getting at. The machine needs to keep the show going, so it plays out the same scenes over and over again.

 

Suffice it to say, if the establishment tries to make cities greener, and then eventually -- after many decades -- the cities ARE greener (much greener than they ever were before), then where do they go from there? Call the mission complete? A resounding success? Crisis over? The establishment's MO tends to be more about never letting a good crisis go to waste, so they need to rewind the tape in order to re-play the same "crisis" all over again.

 

 

Sheffield's tree massacre: How locals battled to protect Europe's greenest city
April 12, 2018

...a bigger battle was just beginning: one which has since spread across the city, seen mass protests and riot police on suburban streets, and ultimately revealed an astonishing secret plan – hidden within a £2.2bn PFI contract – to cut down almost 20,000 street trees...

Sheffield has long boasted of being Europe’s greenest city...

But around 2015, talk of what the Woodland Trust called a "tree massacre" started to emerge.

...questions started to be asked. There was shock when two cherries commemorating Second World War heroes disappeared one day. At Christmas, a row decorated with charity festive lights were hacked back – with fellers cutting through wires and all.

A feeling spread that perfectly healthy and safe trees were being chopped unnecessarily.

...the potential turning point arguably came in March when a freedom of information request, asked by Paul Selby, forced the council to reveal it had indeed asked for 17,500 trees to be chopped down. The figure was so astonishing all three city MPs – all Labour – called for a rethink.

In a disastrous interview on local radio, council cabinet member for environment Bryan Lodge – who declined to be interviewed for this piece – denied the figure was a target but could not explain what it actually was...

“We’ve already lost 6,000 trees,” says Selby. “Of course, there are some that should come down if they really are dying or doing irreversible damage to footpaths. But all other solutions should be sought first. Trees are a sign of a civilised city. We should be doing everything we can to save them.”

Edited by aastra, 02 June 2023 - 01:48 PM.

[Bob Fugger]

“The Big Business of Japan’s Cherry Blossom Festivals”

There’s a popular saying in Japanese: dumplings over blossoms—meaning substance is better than beauty. But that might sell short the phenomenon of cherry-blossom season in Japan. Over the course of a few weeks, cherry trees across the country burst into bloom, painting the country in shades of pink and white. It’s become a national obsession with growing global appeal—and it’s a boon to Japan’s economy.

An estimated 63 million people travel to and within Japan to view the bloom, spending around $2.7 billion (301 billion yen) in the process, according to an analysis from Kansai University. With the bloom currently underway and the number of tourists up in the first two months of the year, a record number of visitors is expected again.

https://www.bloomber...herry-blossoms/

I’m not suggesting that our own cherry blossoms bring in a tonne of tourist dollars, but look at what a little effort and marketing do. Heck, why not try leveraging our sister city relationship instead of mowing them down and replacing them with dour native species, like Garry Oak? God damn it, I hate those stupid trees.

Attached Images

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[Victoria Watcher]

victoria has about everything a traveller would want.  yet we don't have even one single decent event made to draw people.  we could have every kind of flower/plant/tree festival.   we have the most popular gardens in all of north america. but we've never leveraged it for an event(s).

[mbjj]

In the UK they have competitions between towns for the "best blooming", that sort of thing. We saw some lovely displays last time we were there. Victoria does bugger all.

 

I've noticed a few new tree plantings by the city on boulevards but where there was formerly a flowering cherry tree, nothing has been replanted. Three have been missing on Trutch street for a year or so and recently another one was chopped down, yet the chestnut that was chopped down on Cook St. has already been replaced by another chestnut, near Cook and Richardson.

[Victoria Watcher]

trutch is too racist to get replacement trees.

[Mike K.]

Yup. Trutch Street might end up losing all of its trees.

[aastra]

 

"Thousands of trees will be cut to make way for Lynnwood light rail"
 

Work on the next section of light rail from Northgate to Lynnwood will finally begin at the end of this month, but not without some sacrifice.

In order to make way for the project, thousands and thousands of trees along I-5 will have to be cut down.
 

The plan is to plant about 20,000 new trees, although they'll have a lot of growing to do.

"It's always sad to lose trees - sad to lose them in the neighborhood," Collman said, but she also says the new trees may actually be a better fit for the new landscape of Snohomish County.

"One of the things here is going to be shorter trees - they are going to be trees that will live under power lines and not grow into them,” Collman concluded.

 

 

Same thing in every story. Save the environment (indirectly) or otherwise embark on some ostensibly positive initiative that necessitates cutting trees, and replace them with "more appropriate" trees. It needs to be done. It's for the best.

 

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So did we know about the cherry blossom controversy in Nashville? I missed this one:

 

"Cherry tree controversy takes root as issue in Nashville's mayoral election"

 

Every locale offers a different rationalization for why cherry blossom trees suddenly need to be cut down. Road widening, bike lanes, fungus, disease, sidewalk repair, public safety, etc. So why did they suddenly want to cut down the trees in Nashville? To create space for the stage for the NFL draft. And -- what a coincidence -- this controversy came up just two weeks before Nashville's annual cherry blossom festival!

Edited by aastra, 17 April 2019 - 10:39 AM.

[Danma]

See, now, it's one thing if you're realigning your transportation network or building light rail or whatever. Knocking down trees because of some asinine reason like the NFL draft is a whole different ball of wax...

[aastra]

The main thrust of my presentation here is that all of the reasons offered are manipulations aimed at a specific audience. I'm suggesting that the key to media literacy is being able to see through localized rationalizations and thus recognize the true extent of a larger agenda/initiative. When I talk about localized rationalizations for larger initiatives, I mean:

 

Localized to place:

example: high-profile/beloved trees that suddenly need to be chopped in innumerable different locales for innumerable different -- but obviously valid and true -- reasons

 

Localized in time:

example: Victoria's unabated decades-long housing crisis, which has innumerable different -- but obviously valid and true -- causes depending on which 5-10 year period you're examining

 

As you say, we're being guided to believe it's one thing in this instance and another completely different thing in that instance, but maybe it's actually the same thing in both instances (just in slightly different dressing)? When the issue is the chopping of high-profile/beloved cherry blossoms, in Victoria you get climate change as the justification, whereas in Nashville you get the NFL draft as the justification, whereas in Salem you get root damage to the capitol parkade as the justification, whereas in Vancouver you get new bike lanes as the justification, whereas in Prince Rupert you get administrative error as the justification, etc. (these are just a few of the recent high-profile cherry blossom controversies, FYI)

[aastra]

I should say: even though there are many controversies in which the trees do end up getting the chop, there are also many stories in which the authorities suddenly throw cold water on the plans (just as suddenly as they launched the controversies to begin with, I mean).

[aastra]

Add Cleveland to the long list of cities that suddenly and urgently need to cut down thousands of trees. In this case, it's not because of development or road work or new bike lanes or some menacing fungus or beetle or whatever. Nope, in this case it's because Cleveland has been neglectful of routine tree maintenance for an extended period. There's always a reason. We love those mature trees, don't you know. But they need to be cut. By the thousands. Right now.

 

"Thousands of dead and dangerous trees threaten safety of Clevelanders"
May 6, 2019
 

 

Thousands of diseased, dead and dangerous trees, ready to topple and posing a threat to safety along our neighborhood streets.

Cleveland may be nicknamed the Forest City, but among its city-owned stock are ailing and dead trees scattered throughout neighborhoods.

The city has a list of 3,300 city-owned trees along street lawns that need to be cut down.

“This is a safety issue,” said homeowner Robert Jackson on the city’s west side.

Homeowners complain the city has fallen so far behind on tree maintenance that rotted trees and limbs are crashing down not only during storms, but randomly when neighbors least expect it.
 

 

I don't blame them for chopping these trees. Nobody likes a tree that falls down when you least expect it. Where's the courtesy?

[aastra]

The urban tree canopy is more precious now than ever. Everybody knows that. Especially the noble and enlightened authorities.

 

"New York City (Housing Authority) Cut Down 200 Healthy Trees Reportedly for Luxury Housing"

April 30, 2019

 

 

Over the last month, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has cut down more than 200 healthy, living hardwood trees to allegedly make way for a controversial luxury development plan

...there has been further outrage from both locals and environmental activists

...environmental activist groups have called out Mayor Bill de Blasio, who announced New York City’s Green New Deal on Monday while trees were being destroyed mere miles away.

Even workers who were tasked with tearing down the trees are displeased about the project. “It’s a terrible thing to kill healthy, living trees,” one anonymous worker told the New York Post. “I asked a NYCHA official why this was happening, and no reason was given.”

...the trees had to be removed in order to facilitate flood-proofing for existing buildings in the area, and to update their heat and hot water systems.

 

Imagine that. Mixed messages from the authorities re: environmentalism and the preciousness of city trees. Have we ever seen that before?*

 

*yes, in almost every news story that follows this template.