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Threat to more trees
• YOUR sister paper the Islington Tribune has covered well the lead-up to local realisation that the council planned to destroy 21 small trees on the New River walk towards City Road.
I now suspect that this may be a much wider problem in London, though most of us thought that public land with public trees was sacrosanct, especially in these days of environmental threat.
On Sunday February 17, when visiting Hampstead Heath from Gospel Oak station, walking past the lido, we noticed a wide strip of land behind robust fencing had been totally cleared of small trees and shrubs, leaving only the largest trees.
The public notice made the same kind of indecipherable arguments as Islington Greenspace team when trying to justify our local atrocity, like being able to look in and out, which you can do already, and introducing “light” which leads one to wonder how natural woodland manages with different-sized trees and shrubs.
The following day I spoke to a young mother who remarked that the same kind of clearance of public land is happening in west and south Ealing.
I am making enquiries about a new law which makes local councils liable for any criminal acts performed on their patch. Maybe this is another example of “better safe than sorry” health and safety silliness which is going to lead to irreversible damage to rare areas of natural beauty.
Avis Baldry, N1
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