Paradise Valley should enact a tree preservation ordinance to protect the mesquite and palo verde that grow in our yards.
We are stewards of our land. When we purchase our properties, we owe it to our neighbors to create beautiful, green lands that also sustain the environment.
Because many PV residents drive everywhere alone all the time, the temperature is soaring in the summers, and animals and birds are getting scorched. I must even water my cactus now.
The best solution is to protect the existing large trees in our yards with wide branches that create lots of shade. Instead, we hack our trees with our weekly visits by landscapers who know nothing about creating a cool, lush home.
My neighbors chopped down three beautiful mesquite trees and had a grassy green front yard. They replaced them with four palm trees that provide no shade and no habitat for the birds and chipmunks, along with fake plastic grass that can heat up to 130 degrees.
We no longer hear beautiful songs and chirping in the morning.
Another neighbor topped off four beautiful palo verde on our property line and turned them into 5-foot-tall stubs. These fully grown trees had taken 15 years to grow, and they created a life-saving shady haven to protect wildlife from our 100 days in a row of 110 temperatures last summer.
The friars at the Franciscan Renewal Center remind me of Pope Francis' edicts that protecting the environment and harming no others is central to our Christianity.
Paradise Valley is no longer a ranch town where everyone gets to do what they want, no matter how much it disrupts our neighbors' lives, and no matter how much it destroys the environment.
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