Dangerous Trees

All over Bristol, Council tree officers are felling mature trees on health and safety grounds. Equipt with new diagnostic tools, not available to previous generations, and motivated by recent health and safety legislation, they are in haste to remove any trees that show any sign of disease.

But there is a serious problem with the very concept of dangerous trees. You have a one in twenty million chance of being killed by a falling tree (or branch) during a year. By comparison your chance of being killed by a motor vehicle is about a thousand times greater. Yes, trees come down, and limbs fall from them, and they do damage property. The chance of anyone being harmed when this happens, however, is minute. It is doubtful if all the efforts of tree officers across the land will save a single life. Fear of dangerous trees is a public neurosis. Lowering the speed limit in built-up areas to 20 m.p.h. would, on the other hand, save thousands of lives a year. But no one wants to do that because we put an exaggerated value on easy car transport.

Trees, unfortunately, are given zero tolerance in spite of the fact they lock up tons of carbon, and contribute greatly to human wellbeing: hospital patients with a view of trees are well known to make a faster recovery, for one example.

On the Downs, a number of grand old trees have been felled as a result of this irrationality. If trees so rarely harm the public, in what rational or logical sense can they ever be called dangerous? Is it really beyond the wit of policy makers to grasp this?

For more information about the removal of trees from Bristol streets go to the group for Bristol Street Trees.

The Huntingdon Elm - aka the Wych Elm

See what Wikipedia has to say: "Ulmus x hollandica 'Vegeta' (Huntingdon Elm)"

The claim is that this elm was felled for dutch elm disease (as were all the other elms in this row some years ago), and that it was felled to prevent the disease spreading to the last remaining elm. The last elm is situated at the end of Ladies Mile by the Circular Road intersection. This is rather disingenuous because there are diseased dutch elm suckers all over the Downs (one between the felled elm and the last elm), that have been left to spread disease for years. Moreover a member of the Downs Committee told us, at the site, that the tree was cut down for health and safety reasons. It may well have had the beginnings of disease, but that was NOT the reason that it was felled. A hundred and fifty year old tree, just look at it (click on the image for a larger image), was not just about to topple over this winter.

If you see a large old Downland tree marked with a circle (or some other mysterious mark), it may be due for felling! Email us:

Finally, note that we are far from alone in our sympathy with the tree rather than the chainsaw, just read what Vassili Papastavrou had to say, and then read the huge number of replies (from all over the planet), supporting him.

The Huntingdon Elm. Google Earth. R.I.P.

The pale green foliage of this 150 year old tree can be clearly seen beside the path in the middle of the picture. If not, then you see the space created by the felling, and can see it as it was in this picture (Google Earth updates the images fairly regularly)

The last Huntingdon elm is on the corner of Circular Road and Ladies Mile. If you use the Google Earth picture and pan down south you will find another tree which was felled last autumn(?); keep going until you find all the cars parked for the Zoo (something Downswatch complains about); pan left, and the last Huntingdon elm is at the roadside (actually a little back from it when you are on the road). When the Google Earth pictures were taken (it says 2008), but we think in was late last summer, probably the Bank Holiday, then there is very little difference between the top leaf foliage of the two elms. So any dutch elm disease was very slight at that stage?