Of the many different types of horticultural professionals, the two most professional and educated are nurserymen and arborists. The two least professional and downright idiotic are maintenance gardeners and arborists. That means that some of the most professional and some of the least professional of horticultural professionals are arborists.
I have been very fortunate to have worded for some of the most professional, most educated and best arborists. However, much of my work as a consulting horticulturist and arborists involved damage that was caused by some of the least professional, least educated and worst of so-called arborists. They ruin the trees that their clients pay them to maintain or repair. It is infuriating.
This tree was formerly a nearly exemplary specimen of big cone pine, Pinus coulteri. It was impressively healthy and exhibited no indication of instability. Its only obvious problem was that it developed so many trunks that it would eventually develop structural deficiency. That will not likely be a problem now, since it will not likely survive long enough for such deficiency to develop. Even if it remains healthy enough to grow significantly, it will become too structurally deficient as a result of this recent damage to survive for long.
I can not imagine how anyone, arborist or not, could believe that this was a proper pruning technique. Nor can I imagine how anyone could have put so much effort into so blatantly destroying this formerly healthy tree. Seriously, this involved a lot of work! Every trunk, every major limb, and many minor limbs were cut. Some cuts were made at lateral branches, but many were not. It is not possible for the tree to compartmentalize all of the resulting pruning wounds, which will remain exposed to the weather until the tree succumbs to the resulting decay.
Tony Tomeo 
I ‘liked’ your post, but goodness me. I don’t like what was done to that poor tree. Even I, untrained, uneducated, and with not much of an eye, would have known better than that. I’ve never seen such a thing — thank heaven.
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Yes, it is horrid. What is worse is that it is in such a prominent location, just a block east of downtown Felton. Many of us drive past it to get to town. About half a block to the north, a pair of redwoods were stripped of limbs to leave only the upper tip of their canopy. They are about a hundred feet tall, with less than twenty feet of foliage on top.
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We have roving gangs of ‘arborists’ roaming in our wooded neighborhood several times each year, wanting to destroy healthy, beautiful trees. It drives me nuts to hear their saws and grinders, knowing more tree murder is in progress. Unfortunately, we had a hack job when we hired a crew to ‘thin’ the canopy of our oaks after losing several large trees to a storm in 2013. I hated to see it happen, but saw it as a better option than having those trees fall, too. They didn’t do a proper job at all, but it was totally out of my control at the time as my partner was their employer- not me. It is a mutilation that never really goes away, does it? Almost better to just take out that pine now and perhaps plant something else.
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Yes, the pine can not recover. Some trees are more resilient to such mutilation than others. Pines are not at all resilient. In Los Angeles, MANY trees get mutilated so that they do not obstruct billboards. Most of the trees there are impressively resilient to such damage, but if they recover too reliably, they eventually die a mysterious death.
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Just looking at that pine on a daily basis would be upsetting to me. It always bothers me to see how hostile some folks are to the trees in their environment, rather than appreciating their beauty and function. I love a memoir about a young (female) American arborist who went to Kyoto, Japan for an internship to learn the proper way to prune in the Japanese style called Cutting Back by Leslie Buck. It really changed how I feel about pruning trees and shrubs.
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Actually, I make a point of not looking at it. So many of my colleagues put so much effort into protecting important trees. This is just the opposite. I do not mind trees getting cut down if necessary, but this is so much worse.
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