The great American Elm in Sunset Park a few years ago. During 2015 and 2016, I photographed this tree through the seasons. Note that incredible branch on the right; it swooped down, it swooped up.
Last Thursday, that long, serpentine, branch was cut off.
It was longer than the tree is tall. So low, people could easily hang from it, or hang their shit on it. (We love the city’s nature to pieces all the time, from the millions of gallons of dog piss in tree pits to voracious “foragers” trampling over everything to get that mushroom.) I don’t know if it was a structural problem or the fear of a structural problem behind the excising of this limb.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Backyard and Beyond 
😟. Maybe a public oversight committee (mainly you) could offer input before such striking changes are made to trees and park life… Is there a way to do that by as an interested citizen?
Quite the bureaucracy is the Parks Dept….