Canadian Forestry Journal, August, ipij. 



Money Value of Shade Trees 



151 



Tandalism Must Pay a Heavy Price— Canadian Municipalities 

 Awakening to a New Public Duty. 



The changing views of Canadian 

 •municipalities regarding the import- 

 ance of shade trees on the public 

 streets is one of the most striking de- 

 velopments of recent years. Once in 

 a while this development is given a 

 picturesque illustration through the 

 courts which thereby fasten upon the 

 public imagination the meaning of 

 arboriculture as no technical lectures 

 or literature possibly could do. A 

 construction company destroyed cer- 

 tain trees that obstructed its way on 

 a New York thoroughfare and a few 

 weeks ago was compelled to pay 

 ^$500 for each tree and $1,000 addi- 

 tional for damages. A few years ago 

 a decision of this kind would have 

 created amazement : to-day the gen- 

 eral sentiment strongly applauds the 

 courts for such a sensible and 

 courageous stand. 



Twenty years ago a proposition 

 was seriously placed before the Ot- 

 tawa City Council that all trees on 

 the streets should be removed. This 

 monstrous notion was deliberated 

 upon for some weeks before common 

 sense prevailed. AVhile the Councils 

 of to-day would treat a similar sug- 

 gestion as a madman's joke, it does 

 not follow that vandalism in the 

 matter of tree destruction is ade- 

 quately guarded against. In practi- 

 cally all our towns and cities, the 

 attitude of Councils is purely nega- 

 tive. Occa'sionally a town engineer 

 makes recommendations in specific 

 cases, but mostly the ruin or preser- 

 -vation of what are common munici- 

 pal assets is left to the sweet will of 

 individuals. In almost any municipal 

 ■districts, one will discover cases of 

 tree slaughter to 'show off' the archi- 



tecture of a new building, although 

 in doing so, the builder frequently 

 violates the rights of surrounding 

 property owners and the rights of 

 the users of the thoroughfare. That 

 trees on the public streets have a 

 value recognizable in law has been 

 put to the test so frequently in re- 

 cent years as to drive home a much- 

 needed lesson. Courts have gone so 

 far as to declare that destruction of 

 shade trees detracted from the value 

 of an abutter's property to amounts 

 running from $50 to S500. 



Prof. T. J. Burrill, of the Univer- 

 sity of Illinois, cites the following 

 instance of the money value of trees : 

 "Two lots on the same street were 

 offered for sale. These lots were 

 essentially similar in all respects 

 save that in one case there were four 

 trees, about twenty-five years old. 

 Two of these trees were in the street 

 and two on the lot inside of the 

 street. In the case of the other lot, 

 the only trees (two of them) were on 

 the street, and these were less than 

 half the age of the others. The prices 

 asked for the lots were respectively 

 $2,500 and $1,500. A man wishing 

 to build compared the two lots and 

 decided in favor of the $2,500 one, 

 the lot, namely, with the four trees — 

 $1,000 for four trees, or we might 

 say for two trees. This lot had sixty- 

 six feet frontage and contained about 

 one-fourth of an acre. On such an 

 acreage the net profit for twenty- 

 five annual crops of corn might per- 

 liaps have been $25. And each crop 

 would have received more care than 

 did the four trees during the whole 

 of the twenty-five years. $1,000 to 

 $25 — the contrast is instructive. Yet 



