SM...Did they really cut those pine trees?

A few weeks back, pictures of trees being cut went viral on Facebook. The caption points to the mall giant SM as the culprit. Apparently, SM Baguio began cutting down the pine and alnus trees during midnight to avoid getting caught by the public.

I googled everywhere for news to confirm this event, but found nothing but allegations. Inquirer reports that SM snowballed the trees and not a single pine or alnus was cut down. The process of balling allows the trees to be transplanted to a new location. But even this report seems to be in question among Filipino netizens. No one is sure whether SM cut or snowballed the trees, and even if the mall giant did the snowballing, there have been experts who claim that the chances of survival for the transplanted trees is really slim due to the fact that pine of that age/maturity would have widespread roots by now. Snowballing them would require cutting down many of the outlying roots.

When I opened my gmail, an ad greeted me, with the headline "SM Baguio Pine Trees":

Hmm something smells fishy here.... Or wait is that shit? I wouldn't be surprised if the content of the news is just a load of bull, paid for by the sorry Filipino version of mafia/yakuza/chaebol. And now they're just cleaning up after themselves by circulating this "I'm innocent" press release. The Filipinos are a forgetful bunch after all. After one big scandal, we move on to the next big thing to work up our lazy hearts and asses.