Tree Cutting Resident Protests City’S Selective Logging Of Hamblen Park Pines

Aslaug Stevenson walks her dog, Susy, through Hamblen Park nearly every day.

“This is a wonderful place,” she said during one of her strolls last week.

Hamblen Park’s most remarkable feature is its seven acres of native forest. Paths crisscross the property at 37th and Napa, and neighbors flock to this quiet getaway in the heart of southeast Spokane.

A lot of them, like Stevenson, walk their dogs. It’s such a neighborly place that the regulars frequently clean up after their pooches.

With that kind of community pride, it’s no surprise the city’s selective logging in the park this summer was met with curiosity and criticism.

A dozen or so of the larger pine trees were removed along with an unspecified number of smaller trees.

City parks officials said some of them had been damaged by the ice storm in 1996. Others were killed by pine beetles.

Also, thick stands of saplings were thinned.

“I think it needed to be cleaned out,” said Stevenson. “I think maybe they could have done some more.”

Other neighbors weren’t so happy about the cutting.

“I’m not too sure they needed to be cut down,” said Lois Neswick, who lodged her complaint with officials at City Hall.

“I was absolutely horrified to see four chain saws at work one morning,” she said.

Like many in the neighborhood, Neswick said she walks through the forested park every day.

Now, her eyes can’t help but see the round stumps cut off at ground level and the saw chips left behind, she said.

One of the larger stumps was about 18 inches in diameter and had more than 50 annual growth rings.

Jim Flott, horticulture supervisor for the city, said the tree removal was done only after he and two other certified arborists surveyed the woodland.

The broken and dead trees were marked, and workers from the Airway Heights Corrections Center came in to do the cutting. City union leaders agreed to allow the use of inmate labor for the job.

The city’s neighborhood services office was notified of the logging ahead of time, he said.

“We were judicious and quite conservative,” said Flott, who counts himself among the neighbors who regularly use the park.

He described it as a “typical thinning operation.”

Flott said he would like to have cut even more of the saplings but didn’t want to change the park’s appearance too quickly.

Thickets of small pine trees became hiding spots for neighborhood kids, who used them to obscure their play fortresses and campfires.

Some neighbors had complained about vandalism and teen parties in the park.

Removing the trees now makes it easier to see into the park and reduces the vegetative cover that had been concealing illegal activity, Flott said.

The thinning also reduces the risk of fire sweeping through the park.

In addition to the city tree removal, a crew from Avista electrical utility recently cleared its power line easement bordering the park, Flott said.

Flott said the cost to the city for the operation was minimal.