Chain saws now buzzing around Hunting Hills Country Club will take down about 3,000 trees, many of them healthy, edging the private club's 18-hole golf course.

Exclamation points punctuated reactions by tree lovers in the region. Julia Smith reacted passionately when informed by a reporter about the cutting.

"Holy crap!" she said.

Charlie Blankenship, a retired employee of the U.S. Forest Service and an avid tree canopy booster, was another.

"Good grief!" he said.

But before rallying to save the course's trees, ardent advocates might first consider the country club's side of the story. On July 6, a logging crew started sawing. It will selectively cut down oaks, maples, Virginia pines and other species along the golf course, which meanders through the affluent Hunting Hills subdivision in Roanoke County.

The work will take weeks, maybe months.

Trees and golf courses have a complicated relationship, sliding along the same continuum accompanying many marriages.

Course superintendents have a love/hate relationship with trees, according to Sharon Lilly's book "Golf Course Tree Management." Trees beautify and cool a course. They aid a golfer's depth perception, create doglegs and separate fairways. But trees also hobble work to grow and maintain a course's key asset -- its turf.

"Golf courses are designed to be aesthetically pleasing, but their primary function is to serve as the arena for a sport," wrote Lilly, a director for the International Society of Arboriculture.

Smith's feelings on spotty patches of grass at tees, greens and along fairways?

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Harold Thompson (left) and Steve Dorn load a tree into a wood chipper as Clyde Hartman watches. The men are clearing trees at the Hunting Hills Golf Course.

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Cecil Neil Jr. watches as his brother David Neil moves freshly cut trees off the Hunting Hills Golf Course. The course is removing around 3,000 trees because they are having a negative impact on the turf.

"Well, isn't that just a crying shame," she said.

It can be, at least for those who maintain courses.

Tom van Duursen, general manager for Hunting Hills Country Club, and Kent Crouch, course superintendent, stood last week on the tee for the 18th hole and pointed out shaded portions of turf that resembled a hair plug job gone bad.

"From a golf course perspective, by national standards, this is not acceptable," van Duursen said.

'Too many trees'

In March 2006, the United States Golf Association completed a study of what was then a 35-year-old golf course. For years, keepers of the course have struggled growing turf in some sections as trees have grown and matured, Crouch said.

The study reached one key conclusion.

"They told us, 'You have too many trees,' " van Duursen said.

Root systems along fairways, tees and greens have captured water and nutrients, Crouch said, competing with the course's turf. Shade from leafy encroachers has blocked sunlight and stifled air circulation.

After about 36 years of additional growth since the course opened, trees have narrowed fairways, made duffers' balls tough to find and altered players' shot strategies.

The Hunting Hills course is known to some as Hunting Balls.

Blankenship said satellite imagery reveals that tree canopy in the Roanoke Valley is disappearing rapidly.

"We are losing tree canopy all over the place because of development," he said.

Tree canopy cools communities. Trees serve other environmentally friendly functions, Smith and Blankenship said. As more scientists conclude global warming is real, trees' cooling effects and their conversion of carbon dioxide can be vital, they said.

The Hunting Hills area's "relatively high canopy cover could change pretty quickly if they start taking out 3,000 trees," Blankenship said.

The Golf Course Superintendents Association has acknowledged that complaining about trees is "almost blasphemous." An association article titled "To Tree or Not to Tree" quotes Joyce Kilmer, who famously penned the line "only God can make a tree."

The article observes, "With apologies to Kilmer, even God could not grow grass on the golf course if he did not have a proper tree management program."

For the association, trees can be a real pain because they "compete with turf for the basic nutrients needed to flourish -- oxygen, water and sunlight."

Dan Lambe, a vice president for the National Arbor Day Foundation, offered another view.

He said trees enhance a course's aesthetics, increase property values for adjacent owners, capture runoff, convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, decrease irrigation costs by lowering heat and provide wildlife habitat.

During a recent visit to the Hunting Hills course, wild turkeys ambled about. Earl Morris, a coordinator for the Virginia Bluebird Society, said 35 bluebird nest boxes erected along fairways are "probably among the most productive" of three local golf courses where boxes are present.

Morris said tree cutting should not bother the bluebirds, a recovering species, as long as nest boxes aren't damaged.

For those who love golf more than blood kin, the "whump" of falling timber might sound sweeter than a birdie putt hitting the cup. Even the National Arbor Day Foundation recognizes that courses need to topple a few trees now and then.

"We understand that trees sometimes need to be cut down," Lambe said. "We would hope the golf course is doing all it can to save as many trees as possible."

Hunting Hills worked with a USGA arborist to identify trees for removal, van Duursen said.

'An emotional subject'

Ken Knox is a golf course tree consultant whose work for a South Carolina course helped it win a "Building With Trees" award from the foundation. In e-mails, he commented about the tree cutting at Hunting Hills.

"Trees are an emotional subject," Knox observed. Still, he added, "Removal of several thousand trees on a golf course is very common," especially after lengthy periods of uncontrolled growth.

Loggers will transport some of the mature trees to a Lexington sawmill. Others will go to the MeadWestvaco paper mill in Covington. Revenues loggers reap will cover most costs the club would have borne, van Duursen said.

He said property owners along the course were notified about the tree cutting in a hand-delivered letter dated June 12. The letter did not specify the number of trees slated for cutting.

"I did not think it was relevant to the individual neighbors," van Duursen said. "In some locations we are cutting down lots and in other locations just a few."

Of three randomly selected neighbors interviewed, two said they had heard nothing about the project. Only one expressed concern.

Robert Bower's home is adjacent to the 18th fairway.

"I wouldn't want any trees cut down between me and the golf course," Bower said. He said the trees protect his house from errant shots.

"They hit them in the trees there all the time," he said.

But Don Thacker, who lives along the 15th fairway, said he'd support thinning the trees bordering that section.

"I'd like to see more of the golf course," he said.

Smith said talented golfers shouldn't fret about spotty turf where fairways bleed into rough.

"The good golfers shouldn't be over there, anyway," Smith said, with tongue only partially in cheek.