In David Rattigan’s article “Hemlocks thinned at Winnekenni Park Conservation Area” (Globe North, Feb 27), he goes on to quantify “trimming,” informing us that when Hopkinton Forestry and Land Clearing Inc. is finished with the project it has so generously paid the city $11,000 to undertake, “approximately 40 percent of the tall evergreens in a 50-acre area will be gone.”
However, as Mayor [James] Fiorentini and his cohort of local environmental experts have been confident to assure us, “[W]e’re not clear-cutting, and not selling the wood to make money . . . this is a program to improve the forest. That’s what it is.”
In fact, the true intentions of the project are for the sole benefit of the public’s viewing pleasure and safety, namely to “open up some vistas that used to be there” and, as Rob Moore, the city’s environmental health technician, tells us, to rid the forest of “hemlocks [that] might begin falling onto recreational trails.” This sounds excellent, does it not?
Hopkinton is going to pay us, the city of Haverhill, $11,000 to: 1) improve hikers’ views of [Route] 110 from the hillside; 2) make sure no 200-year-old tree falls into our path, forcing us to waste invaluable energy stepping over it; and 3) rid our forests of the wicked hemlock woolly adelgid, the invasive insect that injects the trees with a lethal venom, killing its branches and needles, without ruining the lumber or compromising the trees’ stability.
Honestly, despite the absurd premises upon which this project is based, I do not, on principle, have a problem with the woods around Kenoza [Lake] undergoing a healthy trim, nor with managing a disease introduced by man with the hand of man; but, as anyone knows who has ventured beyond the pink tape intended to block hikers from accessing the eastern hillside, “selective trimming” to eradicate an invasive species is not what’s happening.
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Hopkinton Forestry and Land Clearing, in partnership with an utter lack of city oversight, is clear-cutting the forest and will profit immensely from doing so. The hillside is going to be essentially cleared right down to the water but for a couple dozen individual and isolated trees.
On top of that, when you take a look at the trunks that have been so neatly stacked, it is not just hemlocks that are being cut, but a variety of species. Furthermore, and to address both Mr. Moore’s and Mayor Fiorentini’s altruistic concerns directly, considering the layout of the trail system, so few of the trees actually cut had the potential of falling across the trail or even falling for decades due to the nature of their disease, which is also, mind you, why this is such a lucrative undertaking for Hopkinton; and to the mayor’s point, why are we concentrating on enhancing the view for motorists who never venture out of their vehicles to actually enjoy the forest?
Those of us who actually use the trails around Kenoza enjoy the sense of the natural landscape; we like being tucked away amidst a forest that has been here long before the politics and business of conservation efforts. Unfortunately, that luxury, at least along the eastern hillside, is one we will never enjoy again in our lifetimes.