Tree Topping Watch

Illegal Pruning Is Killing Our Urban Forest

by Doug Wildman

At an alarming rate, San Francisco is losing the environmental and aesthetic asset of its mature urban forest to illegal ‘pruning’, or topping.*

Friends of the Urban Forest needs your help NOW. Please report these obvious and blatant acts to urbanforestry@sfdpw.org providing accurate information on the damaged tree address, company or individual doing the ‘job’ (if available) and, if possible a digital picture of the tree. CC: sarah@fuf.net as well and we will help and follow up with the BUF.

This topping is punishable by fine up to the actual ‘replacement value’ of the tree (Article 16, Sec. 811 of the Public Works Code). These trees do not grow back with viable new limbs as their attachments are weak and these branches ultimately fail leaving the entire tree with no structural value necessitating its removal.

The amazing variety and age mix of San Francisco’s urban forest has been analyzed by the USDA Center for Urban Forest Research in 2003. Since this time our City has benefited from a substantial number of new tree plantings through the DPW’s Bureau of Urban Forestry (BUF) and Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF). Over 10,928 trees in the last five years have been planted in the public right of ways – street corridors/sidewalks.

The USDA study determined that our City was “…poised for substantial future benefits...” as the surveyed results found that the age distribution of our street trees had a much larger ‘younger tree’ population than middle-age or senior citizen class. This can be both a blessing and a curse, for the species mix & health of that younger population must be diverse and strong, and the middle-age and senior trees must continue to provide their ecosystem services. The small, younger trees currently provide very little environmental benefit, and we need to raise these youngsters to be healthy, long lived residences adding to the assets of our urban infrastructure.

Please save our large trees and be the eyes on our streets – these trees are a public asset and are owned by you!

With trees being removed every day due to construction, disease and various interest groups seeking to select a genetic balance they deem worthy in our public open spaces, we cannot afford this continued loss.

*We’ve all seen the trees around City Hall, on California Street and on the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park where large trees are pruned very hard back to the same node or branch each year. This is pollarding. It is a practice that is acceptable from an arboricultural standpoint when done properly, and to three Genuses in San Francisco– Platanus (Sycamore), and very rarely Ulmus (Elm) & Tilia (Linden).

100 block of Roosevelt Street