Sanford Nowlin
The city faced a backlash after it proposed removing trees leaning into the Lambert Beach River Walls in Brackenridge Park.
During a Tuesday community-input meeting on the trees, city officials led off with an apology for their repeated denial that the plan was at least partially intended to relocate egrets from the park, according to the daily.
Environmentalists who opposed cutting the trees have long maintained that city is attempting to disrupt a breeding ground for the egrets, even collecting video evidence of crews making loud noises to scare off the birds. Additionally, longtime environmental activist Greg Harman's Deceleration blog also reported on city communications that suggest removal of the migratory birds helped drive the decision to fell the trees.
At meeting at the Witte Museum attended by roughly 50 people, Assistant City Manager David McCary acknowledged that some city documents said the trees' removal would help relocate the birds to nesting sites outside of Brackenridge Park, the Express-News reports.
“I want to validate what you said about the birds,” McCary said. “We wrote [the project description] ourselves. It was our mistake. But we have to own it.”
The city met with a backlash earlier this year after saying it needed to cut down 104 trees, including 10 heritage trees, as part of a project to restore historic park structures including the Lambert Beach river walls and a late-1800s pump house. Environmentalists and neighborhood groups called the proposal excessive and blasted the city for a lack of transparency about the plan and its motivations.
In late February, City Manager Erik Walsh pushed back a decision on the project until this summer so that officials could conduct more public-input sessions and explore options that would limit the number of trees felled.
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