12 Arbor Age / May 2014 www.arborage.com
W
ant to know how to get a roomful
of utility foresters and line clearance
workers to raise their hands? Ask them
if they have ever been called a "tree
butcher." During a recent speech I gave
in the Pacifi c Northwest, I got the entire audience to respond
in unison. Indeed, all had been accused of being tree butchers
on more than one occasion.
How is this meme perpetuated? Is it a reasonable and
accurate accusation? Are utility arborists and line clearance
crews actually tree butchers, or should we be pointing that
accusatory fi nger elsewhere?
To address these questions, I would like to tell you about
a class action lawsuit I participated in as an expert many years
ago. My conclusions in this particular case have since been re-
confi rmed in other similar legal and regulatory cases.
Approximately 10 years ago, I received a call from a Mid-
west utility company that had been embroiled in a very high-
profi le bit of litigation that had resulted in frequent newspaper
articles and TV news stories. While the particulars of the case
were wide ranging, one critical accusation of the utility was
that they (or better yet, their line clearing contractors) were
"butchering" trees across the jurisdiction with little regard to
the public outcry, let alone proper tree care. The ongoing news
coverage included pictures of trees with large portions of the
canopy removed — V-shaped, L-shaped, and a couple of W-
shaped trees — all of which were captioned with a reference
to "examples of butchered trees."
The utility attorneys in this case asked if I would act as
their expert to answer the following simple question: Were the
trees butchered, or not?
My subsequent investigation involved an initial meeting
with the opposition's expert (a local well respected commer-
cial arborist) in order to fi rst agree upon industry standards,
and then to visit each and every one of the hundreds of trees
that were identifi ed as having been butchered. The latter task
involved slogging through a lot of snow and spending a great
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
Tree
Butchers?
B y S t e p h e n R .
C i e s l e w i c z
