Who speaks for the trees?

Along the road in front of my apartment building is a row of Japanese lantern trees. In June they're covered in small yellow flowers whose scent hangs heavy in the thick air and they hum with bees, and birds nest inside the trees. In July the seed pods come out, vaguely wedge-shaped and pale whitish green. In late July the pods have begun to grow darker, and by this time of year they're a deep red-brown, covering the trees.

















Until this year. The management company that runs the property has mutilated the Japanese lantern trees. The resident manager says they felt the trees were blocking the sign - which is ridiculous, as you can see:



And even if they had been, it would have only been those near the sign, not the rest of them, not the whole row of them. So now the trees stand with about a third of their branches left, and next June the bees will be in trouble, and the birds will feel odd about nesting in such naked branches.




In my opinion, this mutilation was completely unnecessary and unjustifiable.