Anchorage Daily News

A couple of weeks ago, Anchorage won the distinction of being named a "Tree City USA." Anchorage?

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The place where too many developers have never seen a tree they wouldn't mow down before starting construction? Where mature stands of trees are routinely hacked away, replaced by gravel pads that stir up dust for years, while awaiting the next iteration of unaesthetic development? Where we spend a lot of money planting nice-looking trees on public property and then hope they survive our penny-pinching maintenance?

If Anchorage is a tree city, then Mexico City is a pristine spa center, Los Angeles is a paragon of public transit and San Francisco is the epitome of sexual abstinence.

You only have to do four things to be a "Tree City USA." You have to have a tree board or department (our parks department qualifies), spend $2 a resident on landscaping, promote Arbor Day and have a local tree ordinance.

We have a tree ordinance, but from looking around, you'd think ours says, "The right to cut or kill trees shall not be infringed."

Our tree-preservation rules are so weak, they allowed wholesale clearcutting of 10 acres for a condo project in the heart of Eagle River. When the Assembly was working on a landscaping ordinance in 2005, an outcry on talk radio helped scare the assembly out of passing rules that might have made a real difference.

In our subarctic climate, what a bulldozer or chainsaw knocks down in a minute takes 30 or more years to grow back. The spindly little replacement saplings that developers have to plant are little better than moose fodder.

When it comes to trees, Anchorage is like a mafia don who gives money to his church and makes sure no innocent women and children are offed when it's time to whack somebody. What the Tree City folks see is a veneer of respectability that masks a darker side. If we really want to boast about being a "Tree City," we should do a lot more to keep the ones we already have.

-- Matt Zencey

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