This was news to me that there was any battle to be had here.

I grew up in a part of suburban Chicago where all the residential streets were lined with elms -- it looked very much like the photo of Central Park in the article. I can remember the little papery elm seeds littered everywhere. Over the course of my childhood in the 1980s they all got Dutch elm disease and every last one was removed. The village arborist would come by and spray paint a big green dot on the trunk -- a mark of death -- and a week later it'd be gone.

By the time I was in high school, it looked very bare. Most of the elms were replaced with maples, which are only now starting to look reasonably substantial.