u/urban_spectre

One of our neighbors reached over the fence to drill holes in a mulberry tree and inject herbicide because he doesn't like the mulberries falling on his yard.

This tree is huge, probably around 70+ y/o, and fairly healthy, it is fully on our property.

This man has also been spraying our fence & property line with herbicide chemicals because he doesn't like the ivy growing on his side (killed a whole chunk of the ivy, rooted on our side). He made no effort to have the branches overhanging his property trimmed, and you can very clearly see the angle of drilling in relation to the fence height.

What should we do to press charges or file a lawsuit against him?

This seemed to have happened a few days ago, and the tree is already showing signs of injury/dying.

In an attempt to reduce injury, I cleared & flushed the holes and tapped some dowels in. The dowels also clearly show the drilling angles (11 holes total, last 2 photos)

EDIT: It’s a red mulberry, fully native to IL

EDIT 2: I was just taught about red hybrids, and it turns out it unfortunately is one, so nevermind on that.

EDIT 3: For clarity -- this property is a rental with an on-site manager, my family owns this property and I help with some of the grounds management & maintenance among other work. The only communication we've received from this new neighbor (1-2 years) about his displeasure with the tree was through a tenant who he complained to in passing. We had no idea he was so unhappy with it that he was willing to poison it for the 5% canopy overhang. This had never been a problem with the previous owners who lived there for like 20 years. This tree is one of our primary shade trees and several tenants eat from it regularly (as well as myself). We have already been planning to take down a massive tree of heaven that provides the other half of our shade and replace ir with a native hardwood, and we do not want to loose all of our yard shade at once.

EDIT 4: Holy shit, I did not expect this to blow up. Yes, I know this is a blighted landscape, I just removed a whole fenceline of Japanese knotweed that had been there for probably 50 years so we could put in prairie grasses & native flowers instead. I have been working on turning over our landscaping theory to conservation-centric, but I also don't want to lose all of our shade and greenspace at once so I have been staggering work for the last few years and allocating projects as I have the energy. I didn't realize that red-white hybrid mulberries are a thing, and I had no idea there is such vitriol against mulberries in general, I've grown up with them as a staple of the Midwest fruiting foliage. Now that I know about the hybrid thing, that tree is definitely on the chopping block but not immediately because shade from very tall trees is increasingly rare in Chicago, and with the planned removal of the ToH I don't want us having a sun-baked yard. HOWEVER, I have been doing some research and I have found out about tree fruit suppressors and will be looking more into that to keep the tree from spreading while maintaining yard shade (assuming it survives). Installing trail cams today.

I would also like to note that he wasn't spraying all the ivy, just the ivy behind his cheap-looking water feature which shares a fence with our native-species butterfly garden, potentially poisoning that too. He only ever made a complaint to one tenant about this while already spraying and never came to us directly when he has our information and sees the live-in manager. His yard style is also west-coast manicure as opposed to Midwest conservation, he has not attacked the other neighbor's ivy vine on the other side of his yard, I guess it looks fine there.