Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Crime Wave Targets City Trees, Says Report

By Adam Nichols | February 27, 2011 12:30pm | Updated on February 28, 2011 6:21am
Figures show more than 100 attacks on trees last year, says a report.
Figures show more than 100 attacks on trees last year, says a report.
View Full Caption
Nina Mandell/DNAinfo

By Adam Nichols

DNAinfo News Editor

MANHATTAN — Mindless vandals are ripping down city trees in a wave of arborcide.

More than 100 attacks were reported last year, according to records seen by the New York Post.

Already, 18 people have been summonsed for damaging plants in 2011.

Incidents include a Christmas night slaughter of six saplings in the Playground of the Americas on Houston Street, and damage to five honey locusts on Chambers Street in February.

In one attack last year, a briefcase-swinging madman destroyed several trees in Battery Park City, the Post said.

In another, a tree in St. Nicholas Park, in Harlem, was set on fire.

"Some of this is just outright abuse," Geoffrey Croft of the watchdog group NYC Park Advocates told the Post.

According to the Post, a tree costs the city $1,780 to plant.

The newspaper said abusers were hit with $123,000 in fines last year.