San Francisco wants to take hazard trees off the appeals board

Cities spent the week arguing over who gets to say a tree comes down. San Francisco wants to strip its appeals board out of hazard-tree decisions, and St. Paul just wrote certified arborists into its construction rules. Two crews lost a man each. And a golf course in Washington turned into a Lorax gag in federal court.

The big one

San Francisco is rewriting its street-tree ordinance, and the part that matters to anyone doing hazard work is who signs off on a removal. Under Mayor Daniel Lurie's PermitSF initiative, a proposal would end Board of Appeals review for trees classified as hazardous and hand that authority to Public Works (Mission Local). The same measure speeds up city-initiated removals, cuts the appeal filing window from 15 days to 10, and forces the Board of Appeals to decide the cases it still hears within 30 days instead of 60.

A separate proposal from Supervisor Alan Wong and the mayor would let certain smaller developments pay $2,590 per required street tree into the city's Adopt-A-Tree Fund instead of planting on-site (KQED). Current code wants a street tree roughly every 20 feet of frontage unless it's physically impossible.

Here's the plain read. Pulling hazard calls into Public Works means an arborist's assessment carries more weight and gets challenged less. That cuts the paperwork tail on a removal, which is fine if the assessment is honest. It also removes the neighbor's last real chance to say wait. Tree advocates say the fee lets developers pay their way out of planting, and they're right that a check into a fund is not a tree on the block. Whether the city plants what it collects is the whole game.

The canopy

There's a new arborist credential in town

The Association of Tree Care Professionals, out of Austell, Georgia, launched its ATCP Certified Arborist program on September 2 (Telegram.com). It's open to any role, climbers, operators, estimators, owners, as long as you hold an active ATCP membership. The exam is going remote and proctored and covers ANSI A300 pruning, Z133 safety, emergency response, biology, plant health care and sales. A Certified Sales Arborist designation is in the works but not out yet.

St. Paul now writes arborists into its dig projects

St. Paul's Tree Preservation Ordinance, passed July 15, is now on the books and it applies to city road, sidewalk, bike-path and sewer work (Streets.mn). Every covered project needs two pre-project surveys, one by a certified arborist documenting species, size and condition. Construction plans have to name which trees stay and which go and why, and the work has to follow ANSI A300 practices for fencing, root cutting and equipment staging, with the arborist monitoring on site. Damage a designated preservation tree and the city bills you restitution to Parks and Rec.

SavATree ties every removal to a planting

SavATree announced a national deal with the Arbor Day Foundation on September 1 called "For Every Tree" (TradingView). Every removal the company does is supposed to fund a new tree in a high-priority restoration area, starting with Florida and Michigan. It's a marketing promise built straight onto the removal invoice, which is at least honest about where the money comes from.

Drone LiDAR mapped 1,000 trees on 90 acres

Researchers used drone-mounted laser scanners to inventory more than 1,000 trees across a 90-acre campus, logging location, canopy and structure (Phys.org). For a big campus or a municipal client, that's a lot of ground counted without anyone throwing a line. It doesn't replace hands on the bark, but it puts a defensible number on a job faster than a ground crew can walk it.

Trump moves to scrap the roadless rule

The administration plans to rescind the roughly 25-year-old roadless rule that has kept old-growth and roadless national forest off-limits to logging (The Guardian). The Guardian notes the current Forest Service chief previously worked as a timber-industry lobbyist and executive for companies set to gain. More harvest access shifts timber supply and federal contracting, which ripples into hazard-tree and fuel-reduction work at the wildland-urban edge.

Safety report

A 61-year-old man in Adams County, Ohio died earlier this week when a tree or part of one fell on him while he was cutting wood (WXIX). He was found at the scene and pronounced dead. Authorities said he appeared to have been cutting when it came down.

In Northern California, a tree trimmer described as a newlywed died after falling into a wood chipper on the job (KATU). His father found him. State inspectors are investigating.

On Interstate 96 in Brighton Township, Michigan, a 41-year-old passenger in a Ford Super Duty towing a chipper was critically hurt Friday morning when a Jeep Cherokee hydroplaned at high speed and slammed into the chipper (CBS Detroit). The impact spun the chipper and ejected the worker, who was not belted. Speed is a contributing factor. Both drivers walked away.

And in Clackamas County, Oregon, deputies say 53-year-old Erik Gordon Shunn fired around 20 rounds at a crew cutting trees near his property on August 29 (KPTV). No workers were hit. SWAT ended the standoff by ramming the tractor he was using and arrested him. He's held without bail.

Pest and disease watch

Emerald ash borer keeps posting new pins. Colorado Springs confirmed its first infestation after a city forester spotted D-shaped exit holes on a dying ash in July, a jump of about 50 miles south from Parker and Highlands Ranch, likely on moved firewood (Colorado Politics). Texas A&M Forest Service confirmed EAB in five more counties, Delta, Erath, Hardin, Walker and Wood (Texas A&M via Headtopics). Bismarck, North Dakota found it in removed ash trees (NewsDakota). New York DEC now reports EAB in every county except Hamilton and Lewis (FOX 5 NY).

Spotted lanternfly went two directions. Connecticut's ag station reports it in all eight counties and 153 of 169 towns, with heavy clusters in downtown Hartford (CT Insider). Meanwhile Prince William and Fauquier counties in Virginia say numbers crashed this year versus 2025, which staff credit to native predators moving in and a late April frost that hit early nymphs.

Species spotlight

London planetree is the tree you'll find lining a hot downtown street where nothing else survives. It's a hybrid of American sycamore and Oriental plane, and it shrugs off pollution, compaction and poor soil the way few trees do. It also takes hard pollarding, so expect to meet ones that have been topped back for decades.

On a rig it earns its keep. The wood runs about 0.55 specific gravity with interlocked grain that's hard to split, and mature trunks and limbs are large and sound, which makes it a dependable candidate for crane removals. It's more anthracnose-resistant than American sycamore, though watch for powdery mildew, and it's a host for Asian longhorned beetle. One nuisance during cleanup: the fine hairs off the leaves and seed balls get into your airway, so mask up.

One for the lunch break

The removal of some trees at Washington's East Potomac Golf Course turned into a full internet meltdown, complete with rumors that crews were clearing historic cherry trees for a Trump golf renovation. During a federal hearing over the site, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes told the room she is "not the Lorax" (CNN). DOJ attorneys said about 150 trees have come down out of roughly 3,800, split evenly between invasive and dead-or-hazardous stock. RTEC Treecare, buried under angry reviews, said it hasn't touched a single cherry tree and only removes hazard, non-native or invasive trees picked by federal arborists (Newsweek via Yahoo). Snopes ran it down and found that of the roughly 60 trees flagged early, exactly one was a cherry (Snopes). One. The lesson for the trade: your hazard-tree list can go viral before the chips settle.

Stay safe out there,

The TreeNerd crew

On the board

A few openings from the TreeNerd job board:

• Climbing Arborist · Klätterapan AB · Täby, Stockholm, Sweden · Based on experience

Hiring? Post a role and reach the crews who read this.