Siberian Elms

What an outcry. What a controversy. 

The city of Santa Fe has taken down several large Siberian elm trees in Fort Marcy Park and has committed to planting three native trees for each non-native elm taken down. For weeks the local news was filled with outrage and accusations of poor stewardship, government overreach and outright greed. 

Yikes. Really?

Siberian elms are a scourge in the west. They are not native, they are very invasive, prone to breakage, and they are water hogs that prodigiously steal available water from the environment, which is why they are so successful at outcompeting native plants. 

Ulmus pumila - Siberian elm - is on the New Mexico Department of Agriculture's noxious weed list for control or eradication, but they are hard to get rid of. They re everywhere and they get huge.

And frankly they are ugly. 

The reason these awful trees had to go, however, was not that they were bad for the environment, but because the beloved fire event staged every Labor Day weekend in the park could not get insurance. 

Zozobra is a weird Santa Fe festival where a 50 foot tall articulated marionette stuffed with scraps of paper that people have written their woes on goes up in flames. Your troubles are incinerated. It's quite the spectacle and it draws huge crowds. Admission fees go to charity.

But the insurer said those trees so close to a five story conflagration in a high dry environment were a scarily unpredictable hazard and the festival could not get insurance if the trees remained. They had to go.

That's what got the public all twisted into apoplexy. All they could understand was that big trees were ruthlessly being chopped down in service of a commercialized attraction that drew tourist money into the city. There's your headline. 

The agitated criticism about tree removals went on for weeks in the paper and around town.

No one made a peep this year when smaller trees, some native, were removed in the same park to make room for pickleball courts. But here we are, when outrage is stoked so easily. Big trees seem good and natural, government is always bad and greedy. That's all you need to know.

The reality is that the Siberian elms were terrible for the environment, a scourge in the park, a safety hazard for the hundred year tradition of Zozobra, and three much better native trees would be planted elsewhere for each noxious elm removed. 

How was that even controversial? How did it generate such vitriol against the city?