LAGUNA WOODS, Calif.—A landscape committee in a Laguna Woods retirement community identified nearly 300 potentially hazardous Canary Island pine trees, with an ongoing public debate on whether these 60-foot-tall conifers should be uprooted. “The Canary Island pines were planted … very close together,” Kurt Weimann, director of Laguna Woods Village’s Landscaping Services, told The Epoch Times. “They create all kinds of problems.” When developers began constructing the Village over 60 years ago, they over-planted these pine trees more curb appeal. Many of the groves of three to nine trees were planted near buildings, carports, and sidewalks. Weimann said the city tasked its staff and arborists, who are all self-identified as “staunch tree huggers,” to evaluate six attributes impacting the approximate 1,100 Canary Island pines in the retirement community to determine whether the trees should be removed. They searched for groves tightly planted together, trees with declining health, canopies damaging building …