The trees that line the second and third hole of the Hunt Club, some of which will be removed starting Feb. 17. (Photo courtesy of Morgan Gallagher)
By Tyler Bloomfield
The decision to remove 41 trees at the Toronto Hunt Club has outraged some members of the community.
22 healthy trees that line the second and third holes of the golf course will be cut down along with 19 unhealthy trees that were damaged during the 2013 ice storm. The rationale for felling the trees is to improve conditions on the course and ultimately use less pesticides.
Starting Feb. 17, Haig Ave. resident Mark Denington will see fewer trees from his backyard that backs onto the second hole.
He says that he understands the request to remove the damaged trees but fails to see the reason for the request to cut down the healthy ones.
“I am at a complete loss as to why the golf course has permission to take down all these healthy trees … I cannot understand why they would be given permission to take down 22 extremely mature, 100-year-old, 50 foot tall perfectly healthy oak trees”.
Original plan was to fell 200 trees
The Hunt Club has approximately 3,000 trees on 70 acres of land overlooking the Scarborough Bluffs.
The initial request to remove 200 trees was reduced to 41 after talks with City Councillor Gary Crawford and the city’s forestry staff.
Crawford, who has been fielding comments and complaints from the community residents, says that he relies on the judgment of Urban Forestry Operations.
“These are the experts, these are the true tree-huggers, so I defer in many ways to the advice and recommendations from our experts, and bottom line I want to ensure the viability of the tree canopy on the Hunt Club,” said Crawford.
While the decisions were still being made Denington encouraged members of the community to speak on behalf of saving the trees, but ultimately they were unable to affect any change because of a flaw in the current system.
“If the person that is applying does not get their permit they can appeal it and they have the right to appeal and go to council, but on the other hand the public has no right to appeal if the permit is issued. So basically what I found out from all of this that the public is 100% completely shut out,” said Denington.
He is also upset that the Hunt Club, established in 1843, went against their mission statement which says that they want to be good neighbors, and didn’t even have the courtesy to inform the community of their plans.
He is also worried that the Hunt Club will be inclined to take action against more trees in the future.
“Once the dust has settled on stage one, I guarantee they’ll start going after the other un-healthy trees … now a precedent has been set,” said Denington. “Urban forestry has given them the permission and now they know ‘oh okay we’ll go after some healthy trees while we’re at it’ … this isn’t over yet, this is just the tip of the iceberg”.
The Hunt Club has agreed to plant 285 new trees on their property to make up for the 41 mature trees that will be removed.
“From the city’s side we take removing any tree at all very seriously”, said Crawford. “We need to have re-planting programs because we want to look at long term sustainability”.
“There’s going to be some [new trees] on [hole] two and three but quite honestly they’re all over the property, they are dictated by the conservation authority,” said Chris Neale, General Manager of the Hunt Club.
Denington raises the concern that the new trees being planted are too small and will not come close to replacing the 41 mature oaks.
“We’ll all be dead and gone before those trees reach the size of the ones that they’re cutting down”.
I can not believe that the Hunt Club is allowed to take down 41 healthly trees for no good reason. It’s against the law to cut down healthy trees yet the city put this through anyway and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. i am beside myself with sadness, this is just not right.