There is a general notion, with respect to urban trees, that it is strictly necessary that trees must be constantly pruned or they will fall and / or die, which is completely false. In fact, urban trees do not need frequent or frequent pruning as is often thought, believed and done. With this in mind, management and management for tree intervention can be much more precise, effective, economical and keep trees healthier and structurally more stable as well.
A much more important and realistic main notion should be that trees do not need pruning and in many cases are much better with minimal intervention. We could give the example of some trees that have never been intervened in their natural environment, and it is evident that these trees are not falling or are dying because they are not pruned.
It is clear that all trees die and eventually fall (like all living organisms), but the fact that trees can and have survived without pruning is something to keep in mind. With this I am not affirming that all urban trees should never be pruned, there are always exceptions to the rule, and I emphasize that urban trees need some type of pruning during their lifetime due to conflicts that develop with people and its environment, but many times about 75% of the pruning carried out on urban trees is unnecessary and very frequently harmful to trees, as is the case of Bogotá. It is also a waste of money, time and space (especially with the disposal of waste) simply for following erroneous objectives that do not benefit the tree, city or society in general.
There is an immense variety of valid reasons for pruning trees, but the most important and best will always be that done in the early stages to make respective structural corrections in those defects of young trees after planting.
However, this intervention is rarely done, being so easy and inexpensive to execute; on the contrary, it seems that public administrations would like to focus on pruning mature trees, with structural defects that are generally more complex and serious to correct effectively and obviously more expensive.
The reason why this type of circumstance occurs and why we continue to do so, may be evident, as I have already mentioned previously and in other publications, such as the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the personnel in charge of taking and executing actions. or important decisions on the part of inadequate professionals in the area, who have the woodland in check and progressive deterioration; But the answer goes further within psychology and human action: on the one hand there is a need to partially or totally modify our environment, especially the urban one where little can be considered natural, which has led to justifying, for example, pruning with aesthetic foundations that go against the physiology of the tree.
But another factor complicating the problem is that there is already a culture of poor pruning and over-intervention for both those who work in the environment and for the general public; People assume that what is common is correct, so when they see many times the atrocities carried out on trees, they assume them to be normal.