The story of a single, majestic tree that may or may not be facing the chopping block stirred up significant emotion on these pages earlier this month.
But try dealing with a veritable forest-worth of trees each year, all causing angst of some kind.
Bren Burkevics, the ACT's Conservator of Flora and Fauna, sees literally hundreds of requests each year to remove, prune or otherwise disturb trees that make up Canberra's urban forest.
It turns out that, along with a team of arborists and other specialists, he approves far more tree removal requests than he turns down.
In 2025, Mr Burkevics approved the removal of 1120 trees across the ACT, and refused 545.
It's slightly fewer than the year before - 1222 approved removals and 674 rejections. This year so far, the conservator has approved 705 removals and rejected 361.
It's the same process when carrying out major pruning or groundworks around a tree.
Like a strict legal case or a mathematical equation, every decision was based on the criteria set out in the Urban Forest Act 2023.
Reasons to remove trees include dead or soon-to-die trees, too much shade or building damage.
And the decision not allow removal simply means none of the criteria were met.
Despite panicked calls and impassioned pleas, the decision is, Mr Burkevics said, the result of a process entirely devoid of emotion.
In our earlier story, the Pragasam family were facing the prospect of remortgaging their Hackett home after a two-year-long bid to get permission to remove a 20-metre eucalypt in their front garden.
The tree stands less than two metres from the front of the house, which in turn is showing signs of significant cracking inside and out.
But despite several engineering reports and a hydrovac and root mapping report all suggesting the tree's roots are causing the damage to the house, the conservator and his team didn't find the reports conclusive.
The Pragasams can now launch a fresh application if new evidence has come to light, take the case to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal, or carry out expensive repairs on the home.
The soaring, 20-metre beauty has come to dominate the waking hours of the Pragasam family, who said they felt let down having followed the process and provided all the information required throughout.
Nick Reddan is another Canberra resident whose home life is dominated by a tree he believes is unsafe.
The "very large and ageing Blakney's red gum tree" sits on the boundary line of the property he shares with his wife, and the canopy overhangs both his house and the backyard of his neighbours, who have three young children.
The red gum, also a "protected" tree as it's more than eight metres high, has dropped two large branches in the last five years - either of which, he said, "would have killed or seriously injured any person who was in close proximity at the time the respective branches fell".
"The first one happened on a very hot day, and there was no wind," he said.
"I was just working inside, and I heard this sort of swoosh sound, and went out and had a look, and found this huge branch."
He lodged three applications to remove the tree over the past five years, but was turned down several times, and eventually took the case to ACAT, where it was rejected for the final time.
"They say it's healthy and stable, and therefore, it does not pose a danger, which is evidently or empirically not true, because earlier this year, again the large gum tree dropped a branch," he said.
"It's not quite as big a branch as the first one it dropped, but still around 10 to 15 centimetres in diameter.
"To me, something which drops a branch isn't stable."
It was during their appeals process that the directorate added new guidelines for engineers to follow.
Mr Burkevics and senior director of urban treescapes Rachael Dawes don't like to discuss particular cases, but said this was a common scenario.
If the tree was assessed as being otherwise healthy, Ms Dawes said it was up to the home owner to have it regularly assessed by an arborist.
Mr Reddan said the costs involved would be substantial, at least $1000 to have the tree assessed.
But Ms Dawes said this was the price residents paid for living in an urban forest.
"It's [the owner's] responsibility to maintain and continue to maintain like any part of their house and have regular arborist assessments," she said.
"And if they have new information, they can apply again, as many times as they like."
She said the directorate added guidelines to its city services website recently - during the Pragasams' appeal process - because it was clear there wasn't enough information for engineers to provide adequate information.
"We continuously saw that engineers were [saying] 'Oh, there's a tree. Oh, there's a crack. Oh, it's the tree'," she said.
"They were giving us correlation, not causation. So we provided more information that explained what was needed."
Mr Burkevics said the biggest source of frustration, both for his tree assessment team and home owners, was a misunderstanding of a completely objective process.
"There's not a magic wand where we feel like the tree's got to go," he said.
"There is a test against criteria that is applied, and there's no room to really go outside of those. There are a lot of subjective views, but in the end, an assessment is made based on evidence against criteria. It's pretty much that simple."
Ms Dawes said it was also a way of balancing the very diverse needs of a population that had varying opinions on trees.
"We have the people that are very native-focused ... because it's all about the animals, and those that think gums should never be in an urban environment," she said.
"We have to please the entire community, so we have legislation in place that clearly has clear steps and rules, and we follow the rules."
