Tree law isn’t petty. It’s necessary because replacing trees of a similar age is EXPENSIVE. The fines and damages that can add up reflect that.
For real. These trees represent decades of investment by the city to provide essential services (shade, clean air, etc.) that has now been permanently damaged by these fuckheads. And their “justification” is the most dishonest and despicable part. As an arborist I can tell you that no reputable arborist would trim these trees this way. Ignoring the legality, trimming them this way makes them more dangerous, not less, and any arborist should know that. Shame on them.
I don’t know much about ficus, but I know if someone did this to a silver maple or a ginkgo, it’d be a death sentence for that tree. There’s almost no foliage left to even photosynthesize with, and the surface area of the cut ends is massive; it’ll take months to seal up those wounds, during that whole time, the tree is losing water. If it managed to survive just the environmental issues (water, heat, light, etc), it’ll be extremely vulnerable to diseases and pests. Unless ficus are the tarragon of the tree world, they look to me like they’re doomed. Universal should have just cut them down, for all that.
