Bird lovers and disc golfers are squawking over recent tree and brush trims in Oak Park that they say went too far and damaged habitat. Given that Oak Park is a magnet for wild birds and those who watch them, it’s important for park department employees to exercise caution and preserve healthy habitat when doing upkeep and maintenance.
But park and recreation department director Doug Kupper rightly notes that brush clearing is needed to ensure access by parks trucks that maintain a water pump and other wildlife-friendly assets.
The tree and brush growth along the road will come back, sooner than people realize. And our guess is that the birds will keep coming back, too.
Maybe birders should just be glad that Westar Energy didn’t do the trimming.
12 Comments
Do those whiners want an infrastructure or not? Trees grow back, shut up.
According to police reports the buses are ‘habitat’ for more than wildlife.
People would also complain if the parks dept. couldn’t get to the pumps for maintenance. Not possible to make some people happy, it seems.
I remember that year Westar did the hack job on Wichita trees. It looked like stumpville.
There’s plenty of brush around for birds to fly to, no worries.
Parks should be planned, or reworked so that “access by trucks” is not necessary.
People in Kansas seem to have this ridiculous aversion to keeping growth cut back.
Yards around here look like clap because people let every volunteer Elm tree and bush grow like weeds.
I’m gonna take JR’s imput a step further and say that all parks should be banned. And that people should not be allowed to encroach upon the habitats of water pumps.
sorry, input
I do understand we’re discussing parks, etc. but… I always wonder why our city plants small trees directly under utility lines? Do they expect the trees to remain small? Maybe they think they planted shrubs? I am encouraged that new neighborhoods have utility lines underground.
I wonder, in regards to Linda’s comment about utility lines being underground, does that effect the soil in any way?
Brownlee,
I guess this is a long-winded way of saying, “Oh Yeah! Just imagine if we had let the private sector do it!”
ProudMan, I don’t think that’s Mr. Brownlee’s point. There has been, over the years I’ve been in Wichita, much hue and cry over the “butchering” done by Weststar and its contractors in trimming back trees, etc. from power lines. I think his point was “it would be much worse”, not from the perspective of the private sector doing it instead of public works, but rather the history of how it was done.
I don’t know what effect buried electric lines has on the soil; I know that the same are less efficient carriers of electricity over distance for reasons which I’ve had explained to me by those with knowledge and which didn’t stay implanted in the memory.