Show us some facts please.

In a story this morning on tree protection, the Seattle P-I makes a huge claim but offers no source:

The amount of tree cover in Seattle has withered from 40 percent in 1972 to about 18 percent today, city officials said.

The numbers are so poorly formed that it is not clear what it means. Is it a count of trees? Of acreage? 40 percent of what? 18% of what?

The story does seem to suggest that the 18% is of the actual land area of the city: "citywide goals for increasing the amount of land covered by trees from 18 percent to 30 percent." If that is indeed so then I am even more flabbergasted, unless you count my 6000 SF lot with ten trees on it (all planted when I bought the house) part of Seattle's "tree cover."

Moreover it doesn't fit with my own memory of Seattle. The vast part of the city was just about completely developed when I moved here in 1967. I don't believe that Seattle has lost half its trees or that the amount of area covered by trees has gone from 40% to 18%.

Additionally, the story doesn't take into account that 50% of Seattle is in public right-of-way. So if we are losing trees on private property (that's the implication, of course) we have only ourselves to blame for not planting them in the street-side planting strips.

 

Comments

[Gomez]

The article appears to be very anti-pruning, yet fails to mention that trees sometime need to get trimmed to keep rights to way like sidewalks and roads safe and feasible for travel.

Yeah, I'm not sure what the deal is with that article. Wouldn't the natural chain of land development lead to a natural depletion of tree cover? Isn't Seattle laden with trees anyway?

Poorly written article, but sadly, I'm not surprised.

[JRoth]

Reading this after commenting on your subsequent post, and reading the PI article:

I don't really agree with you that the "implication" of the story is that this is exclusively, or even primarily, a private property concern. The lede story with the renegade tree-topping leans that way, but the actual article talks about a lot of things, including managing trees within public parks (a notoriously-neglected civic resource) and also alongside roads. There is also the issue of tree-cutting permits on private land, the status of which is contrasted with neighboring munis. But I don't read the article, nor the public officials, as hectoring private landowners to treat their trees as well as the City treats its own. It's more of a "we are facing a problem, let's address it in all these ways."

[Mike Weisman]

Actually, its illegal to plant trees in the 'planting strip.' And, BTW, illegal to cut one down without a permit. Go figure. I've received a ticket for planting trees in the planting strip, so I had the opportunity to be educated about it.