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When did we declare war on trees?

When did we declare war on trees in Glencoe?
I was sitting at my dining room table Monday morning and I heard the noise of a large machine approaching, heading west on 14th Street. Lo and behold, it turned out to be a four-unit parade of city tree-cutting machinery. Behind the big payloader was a large tree trunk being dragged, smoke coming off the pavement from the friction. Squeezed between the city pickup trucks was a bigger truck dragging a smaller chunk of the tree trunk. It also was pulling a wood chipper behind it.
Perhaps it was a practice run for the Glencoe Days Parade set for late June.
So why are we cutting down so many trees lately?
The current wave of tree cutting and trimming has been going on for quite some time in Glencoe. Countless numbers of mature trees were felled with the Lincoln Park street project two years ago, and more were cut down for the Armstrong Avenue reconstruction last year.
This spring a row of trees along 12th Street, including a huge tree at the corner of 12th Street and Elliott Avenue, also disappeared. Only the stumps remained. Unless you’re a toddler or small dog, stumps do not provide much shade in the summer.
One can always tell when another tree bites the dust. There is a tell-tale mark left on the city streets after the tree is dragged away.
I was out of town when the big tree at the corner of Ives Avenue and 13th Street disappeared. But a look north on Ives Avenue indicated the tree went that way. The drag marks are still quite obvious. In fact, the tree took a left turn onto 14th Street on the way to the old elm site east of Seneca.
At this pace, the mature trees that make Glencoe so impressive in the spring, summer and especially the fall may be extinct in the next decade, replaced by saplings that will take a generation or two to grow tall enough to make up for the mature trees now being lost.
And if we keep cutting them down as fast as the current pace, we could look like North Dakota in no time.
Perhaps we should start planting telephone poles now, so North Dakota doesn’t get the better of us at the next tree/pole census.
Rich Glennie was the editor of The Chronicle for 23 years. He retired Aug. 1, 2014, but still plans to submit an occasional column.