If one wants to destroy a tree one can
- Chop it down to a low stump. Some trees -- like a black locust I have, will grow back anyway.
- Chop it down and grind out the stump. That kills even a tree like the locust I mentioned above.
- Uproot the tree and seperate the root ball from the ground.
- Girdle the trunk -- remove the outer and inner bark of the tree in a fingerwidth at least wide ring around the trunk. This is really the same as chopping it down to a stump, except you don't need the big tough saws and all the work. Just some quick gouging strokes with a ax or a pick. The tree may take years to fall, but it is dead once girdled.
- Use a poison. Except as mentioned next I am unfamiliar with these, yet assume they exist.
- Ring the trunk with copper nails. I am told the copper acts as a poison.
- Starve the tree of water or light. Injure it in ways that attract bugs. Expose the tree to blight or fungus. All these techniques take months and years.
Now in the picture the woman is clinging to a tree to which none of thess techniques has been applied. The tree appears pruned. It takes far more work to prune a tree than to cut it down. True, over-pruning can weaken a tree and cause it mortal injury, but is is also true that as you show with the California olive growers, olive trees like most producing fruit trees are most productive when radically pruned.
Now, if you had a grove of fruit trees that needed pruning, would you drastically prune them all at once? Or would you do a number of trees per year?
Perhaps that woman, possibly a Christian, saw that tree as her income? Maybe it was to help feed her family?
Do you think that could be the reason she could be so distraut?
Nobody has the right to prune someone elses trees.