JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – According to WLBT News, Metro residents are speaking out about trees being left near their property after the National Park Services started work to clear trees impacted by the drought last year and the ongoing pine beetle infestations.
“I and the other neighbors around here are just very concerned with what this is going to do to our property values, what it’s going to do to the wildlife that was previously very prevalent back in the wooded areas behind the house, and it’s just a terrible situation that we’re having to deal with,” Madison resident Kelly Kyle said.
Kyle is just one Madison resident speaking out and said this is impacting nearly his entire subdivision and much more.
According to the National Parks Services, work started on August 26 to cut down hazardous trees along the Natchez Trace Parkway in Clinton, Ridgeland, and Madison, and so far, 821 trees have been cut down.
Still, some residents are having to come out of their own wallets to get some of the trees removed. For Kelly, he has had to pay for 20 trees to be cut down at $750 a tree, putting his family down around $15,000.
On top of that, the trees that NPS has cut down have become an eyesore, often being left in inconvenient places.
“We had, if I do say so, a great backyard previously. The house has been featured in a publication here in the Jackson area a previous summer, and the backyard really was a showplace. But if you’ll look back here through our fence, all you can see now are these pine logs that are two and three deep in some cases,” Kyle said.
Residents are also frustrated with the lack of communication from NPS about their plans to remove the trees and hope they can get an answer sooner rather than later.
“We’d like to know if there is any fix that is in the works, but we can’t even determine that because the Park Service won’t communicate with us… Ideally, we’d like to see some intervention, but this is just not something that we feel we can live with,” Kyle said.
According to NPS, work to cut down more trees will start again the first week in December, and trees are being removed to protect life and properties, even though many are still dealing with this issue.
WLBT attempted multiple times to secure an interview with the National Parks Services about its plans for future tree removal, but they were unavailable for an interview at this time.
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