I recommend that you contact your state's Native Plant society and ask for advice. They may be able to help you with information for your presentation as well as suggestions for native landscaping. There is a also a growing number of landscape architects/designers, in many different parts of the country, that specialize in, or deal only in, reintroducing native species - google native plants+designers, or something like that.

Having said all that, I can sort of understand the board's position on removing the trees - it will cost a fortune. Around here (NJ), taking down a mature tree can run into the thousands of dollars; even if it's cheaper where you are, it's still going to be an ungodly amount of money. Someone is going to have to try to get a deal with an arborist for a reduced price.

What you are doing is awesome and you are the hero of the week!

Girdle those Norway Maples. You can do it in a few minutes with a hack saw. Just carve a nice valley in the bark, in a continuous ring around the tree. End of tree. No need to pay thousands for an arborist to chop it down. Leave the dead tree in place for wildlife to use it: woodpeckers, small mammals, etc.

For the replacement species, you already called it: local pines, oaks, and birches. Those are the foundation species of the forests of eastern North America. Let them seed the area naturally. Don't spend thousands on some landscape designer who will want to bring out expensive, colorful container specimens and plant them with little stakes and mulch beds. Mother Nature knows how to restore better than any landscape designer does. She has been doing it for millions of years. She will be guaranteed to do it faster and cheaper. Just get the alien species out of her way and let her do her work.

If you have to spend money or use an "expert", don't call some landscape designer. Call a conservation ecologist or, even better, a forester. Those guys know what they're doing. Their job is to regrow forests quickly for the timber industry. They typically scatter seed, plant seed, plant 18" seedlings, and/or let an area naturally seed.

One thing that really jumped out at me upon reading your initial post is that "your next targets are some invasive weeds that you have not identified"! Should not identification precede action? As to the Norway maples, given the fact you are near to wild lands, that does indeed suggest your main point is a good one-that these trees are a threat to the integrity of those lands. In my area, NM has so colonized many ravines within the city proper that to remove them all would, like in your situation, run into some real bucks and become quite a project. I have trouble justifying this in some cases, others not so much. It is a tough call.

+oM

Our community is wooded and we were having a tug of war over the common area. Some residents like carefully groomed areas and others want native forest. Virginia pines grew up on fill dirt and caught fire a few years ago (burning a few houses as well) so some wanted the forest razed and parkland installed. An enterprising resident who is also an arborist managed to get a state grant to plant hundreds of oaks, sycamores, and native shrubs at no cost to us. The residents got out and planted them. We also have invasive-removal parties. This has been a unifying project. So I suggest looking for public grants.

Also check for area colleges with an agriculture program. A relative had 200 pecan trees planted on his land by Tx A&M many years ago.

These are good ideas. Most of the trees are about 40 years old, so still have a long way to grow. Many are only 20-40' from decks, and if they fell, they would fall on the townhouses, so have to be removed professionally.

Of course I identified first, then started pulling. A lot of asian bittersweet climbing over the few native trees growing outside of the maple canopy. Of course it doesn't climb up the Norway Maples, in which case I would leave it.

In Massachusetts, the Northern Catalpa is on the watch list. It seems to be spreading into the wild, but so far not out-competing the natives (or Norway Maples).

The latest meeting, one guy claimed to know more about trees than the tree company, so I have a long way to go.

Another problem with the Catalpa is that the other trees are crowding them, causing all the lower branches to die. This looks ugly, but I read that the limbs don't drop, and I haven't noticed any dropping. Nobody has complained, but I'd rather remove them than spend money to prune them. The Catalpa actually predate the complex, and are probably near the end of their lives, so another huge tree removal expense coming down the road. After they are cut, they resprout and grow about 6 feet a year.