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City to Replace 3 Trees Sawed in Half on Upper West Side

By Emily Frost | June 23, 2015 9:58am
 The tree that was hacked earlier this spring is still standing and will be replaced in the late fall, the Parks Department said. 
Hacked Trees
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UPPER WEST SIDE — A trio of local trees that were chopped down Thursday by a man wielding a handsaw won't be replaced until the fall at the earliest, the Parks Department said. 

Last Thursday, a man riding a child-sized scooter was charged with cutting down the three trees on West 94th Street near Riverside Drive after police arrested him in Riverside Park.

What's left in the tree pits are stumps that may or may not re-sprout, said Jeremy Barrick, deputy chief of Forestry, Horticulture and Natural Resources for the Parks Department. 

Regardless, the Forestry Department will assess the trees this fall and determine how best to replace them then, he said. The department will then plant new trees in either the fall or spring, Barrick added. 

Police have ruled out any connection between the West 94th Street attack and a similar tree butchering that occurred in March along West End Avenue.

That incident — in which residents awoke to find that a ring of bark had been hacked off a tree near West 103rd Street — has been deemed a cold case, said Capt. Marlon Larin of the 24th Precinct. 

The West End Avenue case has officially been closed due to a lack of evidence, but it can be reopened if new details emerge, he said.

In April, local gardener and resident Costello Caldwell performed a bark graft on the tree in an attempt to save it. The damage to the tree had interrupted the flow of its nutrients, and Caldwell said at the time that he hoped reconnecting the bark would "resurrect" the tree. 

The tree experienced a "final flush of spring growth this year," with leaves growing from its upper branches, though it's unclear whether it's a result of Caldwell's effort, a Parks Department spokesman said. 

The department will wait for the tree "to show signs of significant decline," at which point it would be removed and replaced, likely between November and January, the spokesman added.  

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