John U. Lloyd Beach State Park in Dania Beach will always hold a special place in my heart. I’ve scattered the ashes of one of my dearest friends, Tina Wafrock, into the ocean from the jetty along Port Everglades on the park’s northern edge. And I used to love taking Rollerblade jaunts almost every day on the quiet 2-mile road that runs the park's length, from Dania Beach Boulevard to the port channel.

I say used to, because I haven’t been in the park for a couple of years, shortly after its most attractive feature – the shady canopy of tall Australian pines lining the road – was removed.

Now I see that I’m not alone.

My colleague Thomas Monnay wrote a telling story the other day about the park’s plummeting attendance stats, which not so coincidentally coincide with the tree removal program. The park has seen its annual visitors decline to 471,000, down nearly a third from its peak of around 680,000 earlier this decade.

I’m one of the missing.

I used to buy an annual pass for the park because it was cheaper than paying the $1 daily pedestrian/biker/skater entry fee, but no more.

As soon as they ripped out the lovely trees, the place felt ugly, denuded and all wrong. And the state’s excuses that it needed to do it for environmental reasons also felt all wrong.

It reminded me of the old Vietnam War adage about needing to destroy a village in order to save it.

Now in today’s paper comes an interesting Op-Ed piece from Boca Raton resident Sara Goodman about the faulty scientific underpinnings behind the Australian pines removal program. She theorizes this might really be about expensive contracts for tree removal contractors, and not sound science. Sort of like Citrus Canker Lite.

Whatever. All I know is that one of my favorite places in South Florida, a place I surely would have rolled through this past perfect-weather weekend, is gone.

Were these changes worth it?

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