Shame on these chainsaw vandals
MY HEART goes out to the residents of Armada Way in Plymouth after the midnight massacre of 110 trees by the council (Mail).
My city of Sheffield lost 5,600 healthy trees in a monstrous act of environmental vandalism. People were woken up in the middle of the night by the awful sound of chainsaws, their cars were towed away and some of the elderly people who protested peacefully were arrested.
Recently, an independent inquiry found the council ‘lacked transparency, and repeatedly said things that were economical with the truth, misleading and, in some cases, were ultimately exposed as dishonest’. Astonishingly, some of the Labour councillors involved are still in office.
SUSAN RICHARDSON, Sheffield.
IT SEEMS Plymouth City Council’s way of caring for the wellbeing of its taxpayers is to destroy trees, which are living wonders of nature.
Not only do they benefit their natural environment, but they also promote our physical, psychological and social health.
The trees have been felled to make way for a ‘smart’ city zone complete with surveillance equipment that will monitor people’s every move, with the data sent to centralised command.
ZARAYNA G. PRADYER, Chessington, Surrey.
EVEN if Plymouth City Council plants replacement trees, they will take decades to reach the same maturity as the ones they have felled.
OWEN HOLLIFIELD, Gilfach, Caerphilly.
CHAINSAW assassins who come in the night make a mockery of our so-called green credentials.
S. T. VAUGHAN, Birmingham.
I THOUGHT we were supposed to be planting trees to save the planet.
I don’t understand why Sheffield and Plymouth councils have cut down so many trees. They must have felt guilty as the work was carried out under cover of darkness.
I would like to hear the councils’ reasons for this vandalism.
BARRY LARKIN, Burgess Hill, W. Sussex.
AS A retired tree surgeon with more than 50 years of experience, I have always thought it was ironic that no council-owned tree can be subject to legal preservation except in unusual circumstances. If a developer or contractor carried out illegally the level of destruction that has been seen in Plymouth, the fine would be hundreds of thousands of pounds.
I would have thought many aspects of the council’s proposals could have been implemented by selective removal and judicious pruning.
In contrast, I believe that much of the tree-felling in Sheffield was justified because rows of mature trees in narrow streets pose a high risk of damage to building foundations.
KEITH WEYMAN, Watford, Herts.
BACK in 1970, as a sixth-form student at Abbeydale Grange in Sheffield, I took part in a protest against the council’s removal of mature trees from the school grounds.
The irony was that it happened during the European Conservation Year — intended to protect nature and the environment. Then came the Plant A Tree In ’73 campaign.
It seems that very little has changed 50 years on.
JANET TAYLOR, Leeds.