A project to remove 26 damaged or unsafe trees around Forest Park is underway and expected to be completed by the end of the year, weather permitting.
The removal of unhealthy trees promotes the safety of residents, since these trees are more dangerous in storms, when their branches are likely to fall.
Earlier this year, Sal Stella, director of the Public Works Department, connected with Trees Forever. The organization’s Illinois Community Canopy-Tree Removal Partnership Grant pays for the removal of 26 to 30 trees and for their stumps to be ground down.
The tree removals come following Forest Park’s preliminary inventory of 3,335 trees in 2022. After an arborist surveyed the village’s trees, a management plan was created, outlining suggestions for a handful of trees to make sure they stayed healthy, and came down if they weren’t.
Before Forest Park was awarded the $22,482 grant, Trees Forever also sent out an arborist to analyze those trees.
“Each tree on the inventory has information based on anything that’s a risk level, the condition of the tree, what the arborist recommends should be done to the tree,” Stella said at the Nov. 12 village council meeting prior to the vote by commissioners to accept the grant.
While explaining the grant, Stella said he’s seen residents write disgruntled comments on Facebook about their trees coming down. He even addressed a public comment from a June village council meeting, whenForest Parker Nancy Greco said she was displeased to find a tree on her property cut down, instead of trimmed, like signs on her block advertised.
“Imagine my dismay when I got home to witness the horror that happened,” Greco said at the June meeting. “My beautiful Silver Maple tree was cut to shreds, a 100-year-plus-old tree.”
Greco said village staff told her the tree was diseased, but it was only two years ago when she hired McAdam Landscaping to inspect it. Workers told Greco in June that the tree had decay at the top, which she said should just require some pruning.
“We’re not just going around taking trees down that are alive because we’re a Tree City USA community,” Stella said. The village was awarded the recognition by the Arbor Day Foundation in 2021.
As a condition of Tree Forever’s grant, Forest Park must remove the agreed upon trees, take a photo of where they once stood for Tree Forever and provide them with a list of the trees, including their locations, when they were removed, and their species. They must give the same information for the village’s plans to replant the trees, which Tree Forever can help create. Those requirements must be completed by the end of next year.
Stella said about 20 trees have been cleared so far and hopes the remainder will be completed by the end of the year, but that will come down to weather.
The list of trees that have been removed, or will be soon, include the following:
- A White Ash at 1110 Des Plaines
- A Norway Maple at 901 Dunlop
- An Elm at 7637 York
- A Green Ash at 816 Dunlop
- A Silver Maple at 1047 Ferdinand
- A Crab Apple at 1001 Ferdinand
- Three Maples at 946 Beloit
- A Red Maple at 903 Hannah
- A Green Ash at 834 Circle
- A Hawthorn at 7200 Harvard
- A Norway Maple at 1110 Hannah
- A Linden at 7428 Harrison
- A Sugar Maple at 7711 Adams
- A Norway Maple at 7710 Wilcox
- A Green Ash at 7556 Jackson
- A Norway Maple at 621 Hannah
- An Autumn Blaze at 7242 Jackson
- A London Planetree at 7242 Jackson
- A Honey Locust at 7313 Madison
- A Boxelder at 33 Elgin
- A Silver Maple at 109 Elgin
- A Linden at 7233 Dixon
- A Red Maple at 123 Harlem
- A Red Maple at 7232 Randolph