Father Fined $1,000 for Letting Girls Climb Central Park Tree

Park rangers handed Anthony Avellino a $1,000 ticket because his daughters, ages 9 and 11, and their 11-year-old friend were caught climbing a Japanese white pine tree in Central Park.

Avellino, who did not immediately return calls to his home, told a newspaper that he would fight the ticket, which cites him for “destruction, defacement or abuse of a tree.”

“My children have been climbing trees in Central Park for nine years,” Avellino told the Daily News. “At least give me a warning.”

But officials said the tree was damaged. They said they will bring photographs of broken boughs to court to prove it.

The story of the pine fine began March 21 when Avellino, a New York restaurant manager, took his daughters Leah and Rebecca and their friend Darrayn to Central Park to knock a softball around.

The girls soon got bored and decided to climb trees instead. They went into a special grove where pine trees get extra care and chose a Japanese white pine, one of only about a dozen in the city.

Parks Department spokesman Edward Skyler said Thursday that the trees, which have soft boughs, are not indigenous to New York and cost several thousand dollars apiece.

Two park rangers ordered the children down. Skyler said the rangers saw at least three branches fall and noticed several others broken and two or three more lying on the ground.

But with no posted signs, how’s a park patron supposed to know that tree-climbing is forbidden?

“There are lots of things that you cannot do in parks that are not posted,” Skyler said. “If we listed every rule, we’d have more signs than trees.”