#saveshefftrees

[thetreehunter]

The mass destruction begins tomorrow

Tomorrow, Wednesday 23rd of August 2017 will begin the disgusting & devastating work of felling many hundreds of HEALTHY Sheffield Street Trees. (It may well turn out to be thousands more as time goes on!)  This work being now protected by a bad law.

But, what an absolute privilege it was to be able to attend the Sheffield Street Trees meeting last night. OVER 150 folks crammed into the Banner Cross pub upstairs room. Passionate, sensible, reasoned and even joking amongst all the recent bad news and bad decisions & bad laws. 

Paul Brooke explained magnificently the situation we face. The chair (sorry I did not get his name) was brilliant too. Many folks expressed so many useful and sensible ideas. Alison Teal, Calvin Payne and Dave Dillner the ‘Tree Defenders’ were in attendance. Words cannot express the many folks gratitude to you all.

We will not lose this. After seeing  hearing these folks once again I know the war will be won in the end and that Sheffield City Council & Amey / Ferrovial (Spain) will be tarnished forever as vandals of the natural environment. The last pic shows how 'Delilah' on Rustlings road has been 'replaced'!!! 

Evil, evil, stupid, money focussed people / corporations will not beat us...  #Time4BIGChange #SaveSheffTrees 

Sure,one tiny sapling replaces a mature, large canopy, healthy street tree! Yeh right

[allthingstrees]

Budget cuts and felling cuts

All of my blogs have been moved to my new website: https://www.allthingstreesblog.com/

Thanks,

Ian

[pengegreengym]

The Importance of Urban Street Trees

The Victorians knew a thing or two about building towns and cities we appear to have forgotten. Municipal public parks, cemeteries and other public green spaces are one of the greatest legacies of Victorian Britain. They also planted a very large number of street trees and crucially, they kept the trees that were already there, by building streets and houses around them.

It has been estimated that by 2030, 6 out of 10 people will live in cities.

By 2050, this will increase to 7 out of 10. People are more isolated from nature than ever before, and access to nature within the urban environment is more important now than ever.

The Woodland Trust believes that we are taking our urban green spaces and our urban street trees for granted and do not value them sufficiently:

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2017/04/street-trees/

Town and city planners have recognised the importance of street trees and green space for years, but unfortunately the drastic cuts in the budgets of local authorities in recent years has meant that these important parts of the urban environment are being neglected, or that their protection is being removed, and the land developed. A tree can take hundreds of years to grow to maturity, but the benefits it provides is staggering and far outweighs any maintenance costs.

Once a tree has gone, it has gone forever.

The Forestry Commission has outlined the main benefits of mature street trees here:

https://www.forestry.gov.uk/fr/urgc-7ekec8

The tree canopy can:

Reduce the urban heat island effect by shading and evapotranspiration

Reduce pollution by intercepting particulates and absorbing greenhouse gases

Reduce flooding by intercepting rainfall.

Clearly, mature street trees need to be a part of any strategy to counteract climate change, or inner city air pollution, but the environmental importance of mature trees cannot be underestimated. They also support a wide range of animals and other plants, supplying food, shelter, shade, and nest sites. Street trees support the birds that come to your garden and the insects that pollinate your garden flowers.

Living in an urban area with green spaces and street trees also has a long-lasting positive impact on people's mental well-being and physical health, by offering an environment for exercise and reducing levels of stress. Some the Green Gym is very well aware of.

However, you may be surprised to learn that trees in urban areas are also known to provide a wide range of other social and economic benefits. The incorporation of trees into urban development plans improves the aesthetics and environmental quality of urban areas which can lead to increased inward investment and the provision of jobs.  Research has shown that nearby trees can increase the property value of your home by 15% or more. So, removing street trees will actually reduce the value of your property. Other research has shown that crime is reduced in neighbourhoods with street trees, and that traffic travels more slowly on the roads, and reduces incidents and the severity of accidents.

Sycamore, London Plane, Poplar, Horse-chestnut & Lime trees are the most common trees found on LB Bromley’s streets.  According to Cornell University:

http://www.hort.cornell.edu/uhi/outreach/recurbtree/pdfs/~recurbtrees.pdf

it is important to carefully choose tree species that will survive the pollution, heat and salt in the urban street environment. The best policy is diversity, as monocultures of one particular tree species can lead to diseases and increases in damaging insect populations. The trees most likely to survive are those that have already proved themselves; those mature trees that are already there.

The Vernon Oak is a street tree in Sheffield that is 150 years old. It was there before the street or the houses and was a boundary oak at the edge of a field. Sheffield City Council plans to cut this healthy tree down and replace it with a more manageable sapling. It has plans, already underway since 2012, to cut down thousands of similar trees. If the saplings die they promise to replace them with another. It would be several lifetimes before these saplings have the same ecosystems established around them, and in the meantime the benefits provided, including shade and canopy cover, but also those social and economic benefits, are lost. It has been calculated that 60Ha of Sheffield canopy cover has already been removed, and Sheffield City Council show no signs of stopping yet. Last month, in London, LB Wandsworth cut down Chestnut Avenue on Tooting Common and are replacing every mature tree which was there with immature Limes.

The case made for removal is often that the trees are dead, or diseased, and are health and safety risks. No one is asking that dead trees are not felled, but all trees do carry some disease and this can often be safely managed. Damage from tree roots to roads, pavements and walls can be managed too, with engineering solutions that exist that allow trees to remain. These solutions can be more expensive but the priority should be to do everything possible to keep the mature tree. Where trees must be felled then saplings should be planted among the remaining trees to provide a range of tree ages and a diversity of types. The cutting down of every single tree on a street is simply environmental vandalism.

If cost was the only problem, Trees for Cities have, in the case of the Vernon Oak, made an offer to pay for the repairs to the pavement:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-41694760

The offer has not been taken up yet, although the council says it is in “discussions.” Meanwhile, the council continues to take legal steps against protesters, and several are due in court on 27th October. It has all become very heated, without very much light, and Councillors Tweet (a Tweet since deleted) that they are “contemptuous of idiots” who disagree with the council policy, or they claim that protesters have spread “misinformation.” However, I haven’t understood what information is misleading concerning the council policy, as it appears quite clear, even from the mouths of the councillors themselves.

Sheffield Council also use the same excuse as do LB Bromley, asking which other service you would cut instead to fund non-statutory duties. Services cost the price that they cost. If you pay less then you get substandard services. It is their fundamental job to balance budgets while maintaining services at the same standards or better.

For me, the bottom line is that mature urban street trees are more important than pavement and road repairs, and possibly even more than house foundations. Children’s playgrounds can be moved, mature trees are more difficult. We would not demolish a grade one listed building because it was too close to a widened road.

Why do we not value our trees in the same way?

[newbeltane]

Tweeted

Solidarity to the amazing people in Sheffield trying to protect their trees @SheffCouncil contract with private company @Ameyplc says thousands of city's street trees must be felled, community says no way! 🌳🌳🌳 @SaveSheffTrees @natalieben #SaveSheffTrees #OurTrees #OurStreets https://t.co/T3uSSSnurW

— We Own It (@We_OwnIt) March 25, 2018

[jdaviescoates]

via Twitter https://twitter.com/jdaviescoates

[wwwfoecouk]

Meanwhile, closer to home... https://t.co/lQ9ApvB8oL #Newcastle #Sheffield #SaveSheffTrees

Meanwhile, closer to home... https://t.co/lQ9ApvB8oL #Newcastle #Sheffield #SaveSheffTrees

— Friends of the Earth (@friends_earth) June 12, 2018

from Twitter https://twitter.com/friends_earth June 12, 2018 at 04:21PM

[ruseg]

via Twitter https://twitter.com/ruse

[jameslomax]

Tweeted

Excellent. Now get rid of the idiots responsible for this sad and deplorable story, and well done to the protesters #saveshefftrees https://t.co/YrvrbedXR1

— James Lomax (@walkfoto) March 26, 2018

[dangerousmilkshakefox-blog]

http://www.savesheffieldtrees.org.uk/petitions/ - UK ANIMAL ADVOCATES! “Please help save Sheffield’s trees. Save my home. Save the lungs of the earth. Join the Thunderclap and make our message heard loud and clear. AMEY PLC & Sheffield City Council STOP CHOPPING DOWN OUR TREES! Please sign the petitions too.” #SaveSheffTrees Many of the local campaigns have their own petition (as well as their own Facebook Groups) because each group petitions in their locality and it encourages people to get involved with their local campaigns. In addition each time a petition hits 5000, that group gets to go and make two 3 minute presentations at Full Council, so far both SORT and Save Nether Edge trees have submitted petitions and so now our focus is on the Rivelin Valley Road Petition and more recently the Save Western Road Memorial Trees. The issues in different areas of the city are the same so each time a local group goes to full council they represent the citywide campaign. All the local tree groups are working together under the umbrella group STAG to highlight the same key issues and stop the unnecessary felling of our mature, large canopy trees. Please sign and share widely. All for One, One For All. Thank you!

[valentinagambino5]

#Ameyplc & #SheffCouncil STOP CHOPPING DOWN OUR TREES #SaveSheffTrees #Sheffield #Environment #Ferrovial #UKLabour http://thndr.me/D1CidD

[jounginho]

#Ameyplc & #SheffCouncil STOP CHOPPING DOWN OUR TREES #SaveSheffTrees #Sheffield #Environment #Ferrovial #UKLabour http://thndr.me/D1CidD

[msclarion]

#Ameyplc & #SheffCouncil STOP CHOPPING DOWN OUR TREES #SaveSheffTrees #Sheffield #Environment #Ferrovial #UKLabour http://thndr.me/D1CidD

[richward66-blog]

Trees in Sheffield: The People are Revolting

I had never realised that trees were such a marmite thing. Yet in Sheffield our trees are polarising, or at least the leaders of Sheffield City Council would like them to be polarising.  In recent days I have heard some ridiculous ‘low punches’ as an increasingly desperate Council seeks to justify their arrangements with PFI contractor Amey. We can only continue to speculate on what some of those arrangements are though. Indeed, the contract with Amey seems to be a more closely guarded secret than the Queen’s PIN number.  

The ludicrous assertion that saving healthy trees from felling would take money away from the children’s services budget was one of the jewels in the crown of the smear campaign against tree campaigners. Of course, this claim is designed to portray those who oppose the ‘Sheffield Chainsaw Massacre’ in a bad light. They are, in the eyes of a council that seeks to portray a class divide, unfeeling and selfish geographically clustered ‘haves’ who cannot see the wood for the trees. Frankly it’s a pathetic display. It smacks of a desperate regime that has lost all the arguments and denies all the clear evidence ranged against them.

Faced with massive public opposition and growing international condemnation from arboricultural experts the Sheffield City Council have concocted a pantomime unicorn of mystifying indifference. One of the last gossamer threads of self-constructed ‘credibility’ is their newly constituted and soon to be very busy Tree Panel. Sorry Independent Tree Panel. The members of the Panel are tasked to look again at the 38 streets whose residents have rejected the felling of trees in response to a Council survey.

More streets might have rejected tree fellings were the survey well designed and publicised. Instead we have Fifty Shades of Survey in which an authoritarian city council seeks to pull the wool over the eyes of a hitherto innocent public. The outcome is, inevitably perverse and makes for grim reading. The methodology of their survey is, of course, a mockery of how to manage public engagement. Plain brown envelopes delivered just before Christmas. A narrow time window to respond. A link to the survey that didn’t work. An extension of the survey deadline by a few days that was not widely publicised. You couldn’t make it up. Inevitably the response rate averaged about 12%.  We are told this reflects how little public concern there is about the issue.

On Wednesday 27th January I attended a Council ‘Cabinet in the Community‘ event. The evening meeting kicked off with a consultation exercise. Our elected ‘representatives’ spread themselves out amongst the assembled populace. The purpose? To gather views on how they can improve engagement with the public. Well, maybe they’ll start by respecting the more than 6,000 Sheffielders whose petition against tree felling in Nether Edge they will be debating at the full City Council meeting on 3rd February.

[jdaviescoates]

via Twitter https://twitter.com/jdaviescoates

[wwalab]

[ruseg]

Tweeted

Apparently not many people care about Sheffield’s trees... #SaveSheffTrees pic.twitter.com/BgjAa99eoM

— Dave Johnson (@Doctor_Dave80) April 7, 2018