What’s the difference between a cop & an arborist?

The senior arborist who maintains the urban forest of 30,000 trees at the New York Botanical Garden recently had a Q&A with The New York Times.

Some of the answers from Corey J. Link, 48, a former NYC cop, were quite humorous.

Read an excerpt from some of the answers below, including why Link likes trees more than ‘perps,’ why falling from trees is bad, and what wearing pants lined with Kevlar is like:

Trees versus perps: The tree doesn’t talk back, fight back, shoot back or run away. To be honest, this work is much more fun than being a cop was. In 20 years, I never had to shoot nobody, and nobody shot me, so I was one of the lucky ones. But the job definitely wore out its welcome. Too much stress.

Miss the uniform? Now I wear these crazy $300 European pants; I think they’re French. We call them chap pants. They have black nylon on the outside and Kevlar on the inside, to stop the chain saw from cutting off your leg if something goes wrong up in the tree.

Treetop adrenaline rush: Falling is bad. You do not want to fall. They say half of the falls from 20 feet or less are fatal. But climbing is my favorite part of the job; it’s like a chess game, the route you take up.

For more of a Portland Urban Forestry perspective, here’s a profile of Ned Sodja, who has been a city tree inspector for 20 years. Read the entire story from The New York Times.

–Toshio Suzuki