Note: Garth Ferber asked me to post the following letter from him. He will be discussing this issue at the next Pinehurst Community Meeting on May 4th.
Garth feels this is a time sensitive issue and it is personally important to him. Therefore, we will be discussing this instead of discussing car camping. We will, however, discuss car camping at our September meeting and can hold a separate meeting prior to that if needed.
To help guide the discussion and to allow everyone to have a chance to express their opinion, please feel free to make any comments that you have in the comment section to this post and vote at the poll in the upper right section of the blog page.
Ingraham Trees
Folks – There is a grove of about 40 large Douglas Fir and Madrona trees on the northwest portion of the Ingraham High School property. The Seattle School Board has put forth a plan to cut down this grove of trees in order to expand the classroom space at the high school.You may have heard that a group of people that lives nearby wants to change this decision.
I would like to lend our support to the effort to change the decision to cut down this grove of trees and to support other ways to increase the classroom space at Ingraham High School. Here are some reasons:
1. Large groves of native trees on public land are becoming rare in Seattle.
2. It has been shown that such groves are very valuable to our health and well being.
3. It has been shown that tree canopy cover has been greatly decreasing in Seattle the past couple decades.
4. Cutting down these trees would set a terrible example to the students of Ingraham High School when it is known that such trees are important to the health of our environment.
5. There are many other ways to increase the classroom space at Ingraham High School such as expanding on other portions of the property, or remodeling an existing building into a multiple level building.
I look forward to discussing this at the upcoming Pinehurst Community Meeting.
Sincerely,
Garth Ferber
President
Pinehurst Community Council
Garth, good for you – you can add my name to your petition if you think it helps – Matt Weatherford, Pinehurst Resident
We have raptors and flickers and all kinds of bird and other wildlife that depend on these stands of trees for habitat, food, and shelter.
I would agree except that the native trees in question are mostly Douglas Fir. Those trees are the weeds that displaced the valuable old growth species that were logged out to build this city. There is no legitimate argument for saving that stand of trees whatsoever. There are no threatened animal species involved. The city would be right to chop down those messy, nuisance, "native" species and replace them with more attractive trees spread out around the property. If the city decides otherwise it would be yet another example of one of Seattle's many reactionary, vocal minorities hobbling the city they live in and preventing its growth and modernization. Some environmental issues are worth going to the mat for, but this isn't one of them.