Pitt and UPMC both need a visit from the Lorax — that Seussian, diminutive, yellow fellow with the handle bar mustache. To quote, he speaks for the trees and someone needs to speak for the mature, green spaces around Oakland that keep falling to clear cutting and destructive earth reforming for deemed development.

I have watched as the mature, wooded area above the UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital parking garage disappeared this week taking urban animal habitat and food sources along with it. The last four mature, healthy, pine trees that I hoped might be left to stand at the very edge of the area were chopped down overnight.   

I have the luxury of having a desk that is facing the wooded hillside behind the Salk Pavilion where a mature, green refuge for groundhogs, deer, turkeys, possum and slowly declining bird species exists on the campus. This should not be one of the few or the one green space untouched by progress.  

Development and progress should work with the existing environment and not crush it down, flatten it out, and maybe replant one tenth of the flora that existed prior or with the same availability of a food source for the local fauna. 

Sincerely,

Kristi Rothermund
School of Dental Medicine, Syed-Picard Laboratory