Preservation can sometimes be a tricky business. Some people just have a reflex to preserve whatever is. Take the Miami Herald building, for example. It's a bizarre building, it looks odd, and it takes up very valuable bay frontage. The Herald is abandoning the building, as the paper itself is shrinking, and there's energy about replacing it with something else. There are lots of great uses for prime property like that. But there's a group of people, always that group of people, who declare the Herald building "historic," for the simple and concrete reason that it's already there, it's been there, and it houses, or housed, the main local newspaper. They don't want that building torn down. And my impulses are the same as those conservationists': I don't like waste, and I don't like destroying or discarding things that can still be useful. As much as I think the Herald building looks terrible, and is a criminal waste of great property, I, too, have a nagging feeling to find a use for the structure. I try to combat that urge.
Some of us in Biscayne Park are struggling with a reflex to preserve, too. There are two things we talk about preserving. (Well, three, if you count the church.) One of them is our trademark log cabin, our main municipal building. Some of us don't want to spend the money, but apart from that, there isn't much disagreement about the preference to have our log cabin to use and to symbolize us.
The other thing some of us want to preserve is trees. Specifically, Casuarina equisetifolia, or the Australian Pine. This tree, of which there are a good number in the Park, and two other common local trees, Schinus terebinthifolius, or Brazilian pepper, and Melaleuca alternifolia, or Melaleuca or tea tree, have something in common. All three trees are non-native to Florida, they are all poisonous in one way or another, and they were all brought to south Florida for their capacity to suck the water out of the ground, converting swamps into solid and buildable land. (We may have reached a time when it is more important to protect ground water and the aquifer than it is to produce more buildable land.) In south Florida, these trees are all listed as invasive species. They come from southeast Asia, South America, and Australia, respectively.
But the issue for us is that we have them, mostly the Australian pines, and some of us want to keep them. They are considered menace trees by the County, and there is a competing campaign to get rid of them. Sadly, the issue has become divisive in Biscayne Park. Some Park residents are tenacious to the point of embattlement over keeping these trees, and others have reacted by becoming rigid about wanting them removed and replaced by something native, non-invasive, and non-toxic.
About two years ago, the County was doing some median improvements in Griffing Boulevard, and it removed several Australian pines it said were dead or near dead. The lack of greenery at the top, and the presence of gaping syrinxes starting at the bottom suggested the diagnosis was accurate, though some of the removed trees were not fully deteriorated, leaving some residents with a sense that trees had been "murdered." Yes, I'm sorry to say that was one of the words used. The County replaced them with southern live oaks. Some Village residents, especially some who live on Griffing Boulevard, were up in arms over the removal of the Australian pines. They worked to portray deep personal injury. They expressed even deeper resentment about, even hatred of, the new oaks, which they said were literally making people sick. Something about pollen.
References to the Australian pines, the ones some Park residents want to preserve, continue to be made. The crusade is evidently not over. I haven't yet heard anyone propose to plant new Australian pines, which I imagine is either discouraged or prohibited, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear of such an ambition.
I don't know whether the bigger tragedy is the attachment to nothing more than some trees which are problematic in our area, or the fact that this issue is so divisive. Personally, I agree with the people who like the look of these trees, and I also agree with the people who say they are invasive menaces, and they should be gotten rid of. They poison the ground while they're alive, and there's a reputed danger that we'll know when they're fully dead, because they will fall over. On someone, or some car, or some house. And most certainly on power lines, phone lines and cable lines.
So as much as I have the same reflex to preserve, whether it's the Herald building or the Australian pines, I think it's sensible to see them for the mistakes they were, and replace them. Perhaps at best, they had reasonable usefulness at an earlier time, but in the clearer light of a newer day, we should be able to recognize that the current detriments outweigh the current benefits.
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