The Urgency of Tree Removal: Protecting Public Safety from Deteriorating Plane Trees

2023-08-31 16:34:00

At the beginning of 2017, an agricultural engineer commissioned by the Walloon Region leaned over the bedside of the trees severely put to the test by the spectacular fire that occurred on April 16, 1995 on the site of the Unisac company. His verdict, supported by the observations made by the men of the Tournai Green Spaces department, was final: rot was slowly but surely rotting the trees, jeopardizing their mechanical resistance. “If these are not felled within the next five or six years, they simply risk falling on their own with all the risks that one imagines”, we wrote at the time.

This content is not available in this configuration.
Find out here.

Six years later, a new technical study targeting the same stable-leaved plane trees, located opposite the Wattiaux company (where the factory devastated by the fire was located), revealed that their sanitary condition was so bad that they were dangerous to public safety. The mayor of Tounai, Paul-Olivier Delannois, therefore issued an order relating to the felling of 25 plane trees, in reality all the trees still present at this point on the avenue. Thirty-six new trees will be replanted later to replace them.

A slaughter to be carried out as soon as possible

The targeted trees are listed on the list of remarkable trees in Wallonia, and are also located in a classified site. A permit procedure must therefore, in principle, be launched. But as the urgency of the slaughter is beyond doubt, these will be slaughtered “as soon as possible”.

This content is not available in this configuration.
Find out here.

A few excerpts from the tree health study report show the degree of urgency. “We have observed cortical necrosis in the trunks. The trees no longer have bark on the building side. Some of them have very long and deep longitudinal splits that could cause breaks at any time”.

This content is not available in this configuration.
Find out here.

It also appears that “wounds of the bark are the door open to innumerable opportunistic pathogens which can alter the affected trunk more or less profoundly”.

1693534833
#plane #trees #Avenue #Maire #felled #Tournai

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.