These are not our Hampstead Heath trees but they are just over the brow of the hill in Queen’s Wood.
But four of the Queen’s Wood mature oaks are threatened with destruction because an insurance company doesn’t want to pay the costs of underpinning the property which they say is threatened by the trees.
There is a petition on Change.org right now to the councillors in the London Borough of Haringey asking them for a stay of execution on the trees so that other possibilities can be explored, including campaigning for a change in the law to reflect the real value of these trees.
As they say:
Mature trees are the treasure troves of the natural world, fundamental to biodiversity and irreplaceable, they clean our air a hundred times more effectively than a year-old sapling. We hear so much talk about how many new trees we are going to plant, but wouldn’t it make so much more sense to start by passing laws that protect the far more important trees that we have already got? Hundreds of mature trees are targeted every year by insurance companies and by councils and builders, afraid of the possible actions of insurance companies.
If you have a moment – please sign their petition.
[…] in July I wrote about the oaks in Queen Wood that were under threat because an insurance company doesn’t want to […]