Jak-thanks for saying I am the Man. Moss, I can't turn everthing into a ISA slagfest, this subject was made for it. And to correct you, ISA arborists are not residential arborists if they work for a city or municipality, they are dealing with trees on public land not residential land. When I started doing treework (for want of a better term) in populated areas I, like many others thought that the ISA tag meant something. When you call an electrician, if he (or she) holds the trade certificate you can be more or less sure that the work they do will be done properly, like your house won't burn down, for example. When a municipality or city employs an arborist people assume that these people will do what is best for the trees and of course not cause unnecessary risk potential to the citzens of that place. However, ISA certification is really not much better than those ads you see, become a legaly ordained minister". Yes you have to sit down once and write a test, after that you just keep feeding them money. So, when I had worked for that city indirectly for a while and saw all kinds of crazy stuff done at the behest of these people, I realized that this certification was a joke. It is an illusion, smoke and mirrors, a scam. Many times I showed up to do something to a tree and the people who lived under/beside p.o.s. trees thought we were there to cut down "the" tree. It is my contention that the citzens of Surrey B.C. have more of a clue than the city arborists. I know that there are very good treeguys that are ISA, just a roll of the dice on what people get. This is just not good enough when people are in parks or on thier own property living under trees that should be cut down. Everthing I said about the "wildlife" trees, snags is true, funny how people give me a hard time for calling b.s. on the ISA, never the things they do, or neglect to do. 4est-big diff. between conservationist and preservationist, which is what the hard core treehugggers are.
