A row of Toronto street trees looks barren and depressing after a City-ordered pruning went too far on Thursday, leaving one local arborist at his "wit's end."

Todd Irvine, a Toronto arborist, shared a series of photos of the defoliated trees on Queen Street East near Leslie Street after attempting to intervene against the chainsaw-equipped crew, who explained to him they were sent by the City.

The images, posted to X (formerly Twitter), look like they could be used in the set design for a 1990s Tim Burton flick: spindly, twisting branches with limbs hacked away and dicey odds at survival.

City of Toronto contractors butchering street trees on Queen today near Leslie. Removing 50-75% of live growth when the City standard is 20%. When I confronted them they said "this is what City wants, call 311." @TOtrees @PaulaFletcherTO @311Toronto pic.twitter.com/mgyFbKPEKu

— Todd Irvine (@todd_irvine) November 23, 2023

The City maintains stringent tree pruning guidelines that govern how such situations should be handled, though they appear not to have been followed in this instance.

Irvine tells blogTO that "the City, in their own pruning standards on their website, says that their objective is to not prune more than 20 per cent of the living canopy in any growing season. And in this instance, they're pruning 50 to 70 per cent of the live growth: it's hard to say exactly how much but those pictures are pretty damning."

they killed the trees they'll be unable to recover so they'll rot and need to be replaced. What a waste. Contractors should be fined by a lot, not some trifling fee

— Walter Spicer 🇨🇦 (ウォルタースパイサー） (@Walterverse) November 23, 2023

"It's just hard to watch," says Irvine, who stresses that "it's causing injury" to the trees, and worries "those trees may eventually die."

"Not to mention, they just look ridiculous," he adds.

Tree canopies often take a very long time to develop, and this hack-and-slash style of pruning undoes years of growth in a matter of minutes.

"The cuts they're making, some of those branches have been there for most of the life of the tree," says Irvine. "So 15, 20 years. And now, today, have decided that they were a problem, but for 15 years, they weren't.

Extremely sad to see. Can only imagine that come the spring these trees will struggle to survive, and if they do, likely take years to return to any kind of canopy as before pic.twitter.com/NHUr4reFqp

— Edward Row (@edwardrow) November 23, 2023

Irvine calls out the City for spending money "to plant these trees in quite hostile growing environments, spend years caring for them, make them reach maturity or a size where they provide some benefit to a city street," only to "go in and prune them, way beyond their own standards to the point where they're on the verge of dying."

blogTO has reached out to local councillor Paula Fletcher, who commented on the aggressive pruning on X, calling it "troubling." Fletcher was not available to provide immediate comment in time for this article's publication.

Hi @todd_irvine Very troubling. Have called it in personally.

— Paula Fletcher (@PaulaFletcherTO) November 23, 2023

Irvine calls the problem a cultural one, with Toronto's infrastructure investments often taking precedence over the health of city streets.

If our trees and buildings were protected like our utility poles we might actually have nice looking streets.

— Toronto Poles and Dangling Wires (@PolesWires) November 23, 2023

"It's a cultural thing," he says. Having travelled to several other major North American cities, he is baffled by Toronto's tendency to "prune more aggressively than other places that I've visited."

Adding insult to injury, this is not a new issue at all, even on this stretch of Queen. Irvine vented his frustration by quote-tweeting his own photo from May 2022 of a similarly over-pruned tree, noting that "nothing seems to have changed."

Here is my tweet from over a year ago about pruning on this same street. Nothing seems to have changed. https://t.co/61kh0jL71f

— Todd Irvine (@todd_irvine) November 23, 2023

While the local councillor's office has not provided details about the tree pruning, many on social media have been quick to assume that the trees were pruned to accommodate raised power lines.

Leave the trees. Bury the cables.

— Pedro (@pedromiguel13) November 23, 2023

Irvine is not convinced, however, noting that the before photos show most branches "cut off or below the power lines, they are really not in a place where they're in major conflict."

Even if there was a conflict, Irvine argues that workers "could provide the clearance with a much smaller pruning cut. If you're pruning trees with a chainsaw, you've usually failed that tree."