Our beauty is being chopped away

Enough is enough. As a local resident with deep roots, I am just constantly sick to my stomach as I watch new residents and longtime residents who just don’t care anymore. Also many, many businesses cutting down our city’s majestic fir and pine trees that have been part of the beauty of Coeur d’Alene for hundreds of years.

I see it everywhere as new developments clear cut gorgeous treed properties so they can build their apartments and developments without the hassle of building around trees. Shame on city planners for allowing this and not wanting to take the time to preserve our indigenous beautiful landscape.

Yes, cutting trees can be regulated if someone cared. The construction companies that are making millions can be made to build around our beautiful fir and cedar trees; they CAN leave a few. It can’t be all greed, can it? Is it new residents coming from flat, desolate landscapes who don’t value our trees? Isn’t that why so many are flocking here is for our beauty? Well it’s being chopped away and the city doesn’t seem to care.

I have watched as the corner of U.S. 95 and Kathleen and its surrounding area became cement. The businesses that cut the regal trees know who they are, and this was before the construction.

We had beautiful trees clear cut from properties near the fairgrounds to be replaced by hundreds of apartments. We recently watched as a company for a new “thrift” store cut down a hundred trees — not saving ONE! — in the area of Prairie and Aqua. Doesn’t anyone care or any of our government officials care that we will soon look like any other concrete jungle? We will soon be able to look over the tree scape skyline as we come into town — oh wait, there won’t be any. We will just see building tops and condos.

Shame on us homeowners and more shame on the contractors who probably don’t even live here.

If you want to use the excuse that you’re afraid of the tree falling, chances are it won’t. It has been there long before you, for hundreds of years, and hasn’t fallen yet.

And liability is another lame excuse. We all choose to live here for the beauty. Trees are a BIG part of that. Contractors will use any of these excuses just so they aren’t bothered with the nuisance of preservation.

Again, I feel they are driven by greed. Replacing them with maples is a cheap solution with lame results that do not bear the likeness of our North Idaho beauty.

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Michelle B. Roe is a lifelong Coeur d’Alene resident.