Save our trees

Recently, I was forced to allow a landlord to cut down a cherry tree that was on my fence line. I begged to pay to change the fence so it went around the tree.

I’m a forest landowner in Mississippi, and my daddy always told me that it was not “legal” to cut “line trees.” We had some longleaf pines between my dad’s property and the 16th section, which seeded a great many others, now mid-mature and lovely.

A neighbor once cut an old-growth longleaf on the line between my property and his, and my house shook. The next day, I saw he had scattered pine needles over the stump, as if I wouldn’t notice. I will never forgive him, even though he is long dead. The happy faces of the men carrying off the trunk made me sick.

How is killing that cherry tree — growing straight up, not on the roof of his slum house — going to increase his income? All it will do is raise the cost of air conditioning for the poor tenant and deny pollinators and birds of the flowers and the fruit.

Foresters say the trees that are losing ground because of the pine plantations are the hollies and cherries — if the prep work doesn’t kill them, hogs and deer eat the seedlings. The head of the “killing crew” agreed with me that big old cherries like this one are rare in the city. He promised to take the two trunks to a hardwood sawmill, an opportunity missed by the landlord.

Now, I have to find someone to fix the fence.

This story was originally published July 26, 2016 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Save our trees."