To the Editor,
Cutting the city budget of Parks’ already anemic funding will result in is an increased yielding of parks to city contractors to take down old growth trees in our area, in an effort to raise added money through mitigation.
The mechanism is this: When there is a capital project, such as the I-95/Bruckner complex and in particular the area toward Pelham Bay where new rampways were put in, large trees are taken down. There was most likely little resistance to this by Parks because when such trees come down there are mitigations made for the planting of new trees in an equivalency that is calculated by a formula, which amounts to a hundred or more 3-inch trees to compensate for a single large one taken down. Often it can be a 150 or more small trees. Each small tree has a set value.
I know that back in 2016 an individual mitigation 3-inch tree cost about $1,600, which included the tree itself and the process of planting.
If a large oak, for instance, is deemed to be worth 120 3-inch trees, then the mitigation cost (going back 7 years) for that oak would be 120 trees multiplied by $1,600 per tree, which equals $192,000. I don’t know what the conversion value is now, but I would guess it’s easily double that or close to $400,000 for a large oak.
Obviously, Parks or the contractor cannot plant 120 new 3-inch trees for each big tree down, so trees are converted into money. Maybe 20 will be actually planted, per large tree down, and the rest converted into money on the order of $300,000. That money will go directly into the Parks Department budget as part of the mitigation and fund Parks. Meantime, we have lost some serious forestry as part of the worldwide destruction of forestry in national parks, wild and urban areas. Just exactly what we need as each year gets hotter than the next, which in turn kills more trees.
I estimate that in the Pelham Bay area near where I-95 crosses Pelham Parkway and new rampways were installed, an easy 7 large trees have been taken down over the last two years, but probably more than that. The conversion values therefore run into the millions of dollars, which means there is no incentive for Parks to stand up against contractors and attempt to save trees. And that is just one area of the I-95/Bruckner project.
Additionally, in the Morris Park and Pelham Parkway areas and all the other outlying areas of Pelham Parkway (really the whole Bronx), trees are being cut down by private home owners, commercial enterprises as well as the city and its contractors.
One of the great beauties of the Bronx was its trees, and still is on Pelham Parkway for instance. But how long will this last as the mindset is to cut, cut, cut when the very opposite is needed?
George Zurich
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