Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by guilhas | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

guilhas

I think a bigger issue is healthy trees being cut in a lot of urban areas.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5801627/Great-tree-...

Reference to UK, but I can see the same happening in Ireland and Portugal.

View on HN

Frequently, the first step when building in the US is to rip down any existing trees and completely clear the property

They recently did that in my area (rural/suburbs in Canada).

They cleared a huge section of old-growth forest to make a big community area covered with grass.

Instead of keeping some trees aside or not clearing the whole thing, they planted new young sapling all around the pedestrian paths and bicycle lanes.

Everyone is complaining about the lack of shade in that area (so big it feels like you are standing in the middle of a plain) and the city's answer is: "Sorry, we planted trees but they won't be big enough to cast shade for years. Just be patient."

It feels ridiculous because the whole area is surrounded by forest.

And then the trees will grow with the branches overhanging streets, powerlines, and homes - prompting the city/power utility to trim them. But naturally they won't hire arborists to do it.

The city of LA did that in my neighborhood last year. My street might as well have no trees at all.

This is likely regional dependent. In Alaska and Western Washington this is definitely true. When my neighbor built his house they tore down the forest.

In Utah tho where trees are harder to grow and establish, the construction company will often ask you, or just leave mature trees where they are as long as they aren't blocking the house.

Yeah there definitely need to be local restrictions on this when trees are more sparse. Atlanta requires approval and paying a fee to cut down trees on a lot, but some argue the cost is still too low to discourage it.

It's kind of sad. Reminds me of the (several) cartoons I saw as a kid where the bulldozers come and conquer the forest.

Happening in Paris as well: the city keeps cutting trees that are more than 100 years old just because they can:

http://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-la-place-de-la-natio...

Article says that they took down the trees in order to undertake a study on how leak-proof the subway lines beneath the trees were? There's got to be a better way.

That's just the excuse they needed.

I think a lot of trees were cut down in Portugal due to allergy concerns, despite that being mostly a misconception of the causes, but I can't say I've noticed an actual reduction in the number.

That article specifically says they’re not “healthy” per se:

> Thousands of trees in the city, assessed by the contractor Amey as dying, diseased or dangerous, have been axed.

Sometimes, that's due to blights. We're losing a lot of beautiful, mature ash trees to emerald ash borers. So any tree with even a hint of them leads to immediate destruction.

I have a big, beautiful ash tree, and live a few blocks from a large park (a couple of square miles) with hundreds of ash trees, so I worry just how long I'll get to keep my tree.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com