Tree Vandals

A few weekends ago some tree vandals went down the parkway and pulled off low-hanging branches off of the Elms. I know that some of the neighbors cleaned up the mess by putting stuff in their garbage.

I asked Autumn Montegna (the elm monitor for the City) about this. She advises us not to clean up elm limbs from the big trees - they are potential dutch elm disease carriers and need to be chipped. We are to call her if branches come down and she will send a City truck out to collect any debris and the City will properly dispose of it. Autumn's phone number at the City is 503-701-7622.

I also pointed out to Autumn that when they pulled out those trees so suddenly, vandalism occurred. This is not random - there are studies showing that places with fewer trees have higher crime rates! I heard this in my tree stewardship class from the Oregon State Forester. Wow, trees are important in lots of different ways.