To be honest, I'm not sure which side of this conflict I come on. Sure, 40% of the trees live on private land, but only a fraction of that would need to actually be razed for new housing, and with the changing landscape, that housing should be much more denser than previous sfh. I'm not sure how much new development is responsible for the reducing population.

On the other hand, while the trees exist, the ending quote is telling that no new trees seem to be growing because of the changing climate. Just mere numbers currently existing seems too simplistic to apply as a metric to determine whether something is endangered when that species is not really reproducing well. By the point it becomes endangered, it will be too late.

The existing bill sounds like a good compromise. May be another (or instead of legislation, an administrative plan) could be to slot a certain number of allowances, say for 1-5% of the existing tree population, and grant permits for removal up to that number, and require the new housing to be above a certain density requirement to get the permits. That way everyone gets a little of what they want, yimby's get their houses, the trees are somewhat protected and it's not open season on them, and the only ones who lose out are lazy individual homeowners who want to kill their tree so they can put up another boring grass lawn.