Editor:
In the article about the forest being too dense, the recommendation was to trim existing trees up 15 to 30 feet and remove the young ones. If I trimmed my older trees up that high, I would no longer receive their shade, and my home, soil, plants and area temperature would be hotter, causing many problems.
By the way, trimming needs to be where the branch connects to the main branch or trunk, not trimmed like a bush like Caltrans did last year.
You shouldn’t thin the trees based on age, but thin for the health of the remaining trees. Can you imagine if we removed all the young black oaks? The borer affects the older trees and if the young ones were gone, we would have no black oaks.
Why would I remove all the young trees when they require less water than the older tree, one that might be encroaching on my home or power lines?
Instead, an arborist could tell me which young tree might cause this problem in the future and I would decide when to cut it down.
The big deterrent to tree removal is cost. We have a cedar growing at a slant to our garage. We’d love to have it removed and give the remaining large trees more room and less fight for water, but at this point in time, we sadly don’t have the money because our first home hasn’t sold.
Absent land owners would be willing to thin their trees if they were educated about the health of the remaining trees, the shade being more lush. Or maybe a younger tree farther from the house is a better location than the older one next to the house. Or they could learn about which tree roots will cause trouble to a home foundation.
When you have an individual desire to remove all oaks because of fire risk, then some of us say it will look like a fire came through if they were all cut and there would be fewer wildlife because of the mass removals. Instead, we need an arborist, a landscaper and a lumber company to educate us on how to thin our land to the benefit of the land, not just for fire concern, to result in a healthy forest. And then provide funding assistance.
Merrie VonSeggern
Idyllwild
