By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

It's with more than passing interest that I follow Fayette County's and Fayetteville's search for ways to save more trees from the bulldozer.

One of the first stories I covered when I burst onto the community journalism scene in 1972 was about trees. A group of residents was enraged over a developer's plan to put a convenience store at the entrance to their neighborhood, and to destroy a large stand of trees in the process.

The convenience store was on the plat when construction of the neighborhood was approved, and the land was zoned commercial at the same time. None of the residents had bothered to find that out before they bought their houses. It's an old story.

But what made it interesting was the residents' passion for the trees. They got organized and lined up in front of the bulldozer, and I got some great photos by climbing a pile of debris behind the line of residents and trees and shooting down at the angry bulldozer operator bearing down on them.

The residents broke ranks, of course, and left me on top of the pile of debris as the bulldozer bore down on me. I was younger back then, and managed to scramble down in time to avoid being buried under a stack of freshly bulldozed pine trees.

Since then, I've covered the same story, with minor changes in detail, dozens of times.

There's something inside most of us that doesn't like to see a tree die, no matter how much we may believe in free enterprise and private property rights.

So officials are trying to walk a fine line, writing an ordinance that will save as many of Fayette's fine old oak trees as possible without completely obliterating people's right to do as they wish with their property.

Like most conservatives, I'm suspicious of the liberal mind set that always sees a crisis and therefore a need for larger government with more control and less freedom for the individual.

I'm told, for instance, that Atlanta Magazine had an article in a recent edition in which the shocking news was reported that trees are being destroyed in the greater Atlanta area faster than in the Amazon rain forests.

I wasn't able to find the article on the magazine's web site to find out how the reporter arrived at this devastating revelation. I wonder whether apples are being compared with apples, or whether this is another liberal media attempt to frighten us into giving up our freedom.

But regardless of the accuracy and applicability of this particular report, I think most of us can agree that we would prefer to see as many of the region's older trees preserved as possible.

We may or may not agree on how much control our local governments should exercise in order to achieve that result, let alone how much control the state and federal governments should be allowed.

Georgia's Gov. Roy hath decreed that 10 percent of land throughout the state be set aside for green space, which certainly will save some trees. We have yet to see whether his honor will back up his green space decree with some green backs to help pay for it, and whether he is willing to use the right of eminent domain to force land owners to give up potential profit they could earn by building shopping malls and neighborhoods on their land instead of selling it to the government for parks and preserves.

But then, there are other ways to achieve the desired result.

One example: While expressing concern for Fayette's trees and ordering that the county tree preservation ordinance be studied and strengthened, the Fayette County Commission responded with bored yawns recently as advocates presented the idea of passing new zoning laws that encourage a creative approach to neighborhood design.

Instead of carpeting Fayette with two-acre lots, this approach would encourage developers to put the houses one one-acre or even smaller lots, but carving out large areas of undisturbed land as a trade-off. If the zoning called for five-acre lots, for instance, the developer could still put only 20 homes on a 100-acre property, but might put those 20 homes on 30 acres, leaving ten acres for streets and utilities, and 60 acres of untouched woods.

Instead of moving forward on that idea, which would truly accomplish some of what we want to see without infringing on anyone's freedom, we're focusing our efforts on laws designed to save one or two trees per commercial development.

I'm not by any means suggesting that I oppose the efforts to write tougher tree preservation rules into the development regulations, but the situation does remind one of the old saw about not seeing the forest for the trees.

More on this later.

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