Dear Editor:
RE: County: removed trees posed safety risk to the public, April 11.
I was walking through York Road Park in Guelph last week with my grand daughter and we were enjoying the majestic trees along the park’s busy road side.
We watched squirrels gather food, saw beautiful birds and she would pick up a fallen stick or branch dropped by the trees and play. In between each giant tree were previously planted smaller trees – the old and the young supporting each other. I suspect there is a plan to keep the park’s canopy, beauty, protection and environmental health for the community.
The significance of the great life, history and beauty of anything that has lived to be very old and large and still managing to survive human development is to be treated with great appreciation, respect and care before they are all gone.
Regarding last week’s article about the removal of four old trees along Wellington Road 18, the site of these trees was not near a pedestrian area, a baseball diamond, a soccer field, set well back from the road and enhanced the beauty of the trip between our towns – and yet they were taken down by the county without any notice to taxpayers.
The location, the tree health (I see no rot in the stumps), the distance from road is similar to the great trees I admired in Guelph. Unnecessary removal of large aging trees and the value they provide is a tragedy that needs to be recognized by us all.
Conversely, check out the large trees up high on the embankment on the road to Salem from downtown Elora (main street). Current construction of a building up high on the hill will certainly be detriment the survival of these beauties trapped between a brick wall and the construction site – a very dangerous situation over time.
But the trees did not create the impending problem, so let’s try as a community to get our act together, coordinate and communicate, and think of tree protection, young and old, in everything we do.
And when we have to destroy something that was there long before us, let’s make sure we understand why.
Nancy McFater,
Fergus