I’ve been managing a 60-inch DBH Douglas fir, about 170 feet tall, for eight years. The client hired us to laterally reduce the overextended limbs, and in that time only one limb has failed — a 6-inch branch that came down during a 50-year storm where roughly one in twelve homes in the neighborhood were hit by large firs.
After seeing the damage around them, the neighbors looked at this tree — the biggest tree in the area — and hired a well-respected TRAQ arborist for a second opinion. He rated the tree as high risk. I respect his assessment. My own rating was moderate risk, based on the tree’s history, structure, and the management work already done.
Given this difference in professional opinions, I think the right step for my client is to get a third arborist’s assessment. That seems like the fair way to approach a situation where two qualified arborists reach different conclusions.
Is that how this should work?
This subreddit is for tree law enthusiasts who enjoy browsing a list of tree law stories from other locations (subreddits, news articles, etc), and is not the best place to receive answers to questions about what the law is. There are better places for that.
If you're attempting to understand more about tree law in regards to a particular situation, please redirect your question to /r/legaladvice for the US, or the appropriate legal advice subreddit for your location, and then feel free to crosspost that thread here for posterity.
If you're attempting to understand more about trees in regards to a particular situation, please redirect your question to /r/forestry for additional information on tree health and related topics to trees.
This comment is simply a reminder placed on every post to /r/treelaw, it does not mean your post was censored or removed.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Meet with other Arborist and discuss conclusions and reasoning - how far apart were the actual scores? Was yours just below the threshold for high? Either your client of 8 years trusts your opinion/reasoning or let them keep spending money on more assessments and realize for themselves that every Arborist will probably have a slightly different opinion.
It’s hard to get to a high risk rating without some kind of major visible issue.
Maybe someone with more years of experience with old growth fir. They do shed branches in high winds and so over thinning is not recommended and they get root rot often . If we knew more about the tree it may help . Yes get another opinion. Doug firs are one of my favorite trees .
We both have decades of experience. No thinning has been done to the tree. Just lateral reduction of overextended limbs. There's no sign of decay, so we can't make assumptions based on the unseen without evidence.