San Antonio, TX; 1/7/09

It's still the 1980s on North Side San Antonio Express - San Antonio,TX,USA Last year, Powell and Denton reached an unpublicized civil agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in which they preserved more than 400 wooded acres elsewhere on the property to mitigate the lost warbler habitat.
That untouched green space technically puts the developers in compliance with the city's modern tree rules, which allow owners to raze trees if they set aside 25 percent of contiguous tree canopy.
Today, homebuilders who bought parts of the property from Powell and Denton are preserving the 400 acres and wiping out much of the remaining forest, grinding the landscape to bare limestone for 2,000 homes.
Knowing the project might technically comply with the city's tree ordinance doesn't comfort some neighbors.
``It had been a wall of trees. You could not see any land. It was all trees,'' said Maiya Huffman, whose home across Bulverde Road overlooks the devastation.
``How could anybody want to take that beautiful scenery away?''