We Feel Your Pain, But We're Still Cutting The Trees

That was the message delivered to Key West folks who are concerned about the tree-cutting at Fort Taylor. With super efficiency for a government group, the tree-cutters moved in and 88 trees bit the dust. Half of these trees were living things.

We understand the motive for the cutting is to remove the invasive plants and try to promote the growth of native species. While this may be a laudable motive, we wonder, however, whether there is not some alternative to doing away with all the Australian Pines at once. Not only will there be no shade where the cut trees were, but we wonder whether there will be an increased likelihood of beach erosion -- the very thing the cutting was meant to control -- while the State Park planners wait for the "non-invasive species," whatever that might be, to take over for the Australian Pines that were cut down.

Let's hope the planners are right. We, however, are a bit skeptical. History has taught us that when humans start trying to engineer nature, we often cannot predict the ultimate outcome.