Here at EKO Diena we talk a lot about planting trees, it's a great thing and we should all be doing it to try to reduce and reverse the massive deforestation that we've done over the last couple of centuries. But... while planting fresh new trees is all well and good, it's no substitute for simply not felling older ones to start with. Mature trees in city streets are good for humans in far more ways than just capturing carbon, and they support their own ecosystems of nature as well. The reality is that keeping one mature street tree is actually far better for everyone around than planting lots of new ones. This article from Mary Gagen , Professor of Physical Geography at Swansea University , explains why they are so important. Thanks to Victorian street planners , many British streets were designed to be full of big trees and, with 84% of the population living in urban areas , most people are more likely to encounter trees in the streets than they are in forests. The UK is one of the least densely wooded countries in Europe (at 13% coverage compared to the EU average of 38% ) and, as such, its street trees are even more valuable. This became all too clear as the UK first entered lockdown in spring 2020, when many people spent more time on their local streets and in parks. Online tree app Tree Talk saw a 50-fold increase in users as people fell in love with their local “street trees”. They were quite right to do so. The wood of street trees stores carbon , while their roots and crowns support wildlife and slow rainfall, reducing urban flooding . Transpiration and shade from their canopies reduces temperatures in heatwaves, while pollution-trapping leaves lower the prevalence of asthma . If these ecosystem services weren’t enough, having trees on our streets reduces crime rates and improves mental health and wellbeing . One mature street tree can have a net ecosystem service value of thousands of pounds. <img loading="lazy" src="https://ekodiena.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/street-trees-1024x556.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-1307" width="800" height="NaN" srcset="https://ekodiena.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/street-trees-1024x556.jpg 1024w, https://ekodiena.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/street-trees-300x163.jpg 300w, https://ekodiena.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/street-trees-768x417.jpg 768w, https://ekodiena.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/street-trees.jpg 1400w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> Piqsels Big trees are being felled Sadly, the UK has an unhealthy street tree-felling habit. Up to 60 trees per day are chopped down to make way for buildings and infrastructure, such as roads or sewers. Felling rates could also rise as development accelerates and governments relax planning rules to aid post-pandemic economic recovery. It is larger street trees which are most often the victims of development because they are a challenge for city planners. Large species like London planes, beech and oak need expensive, carefully engineered tree pits to help them grow safely surrounded by concrete and to prevent their roots from pushing up pavements. Such costs are more than offset, though, when we value nature – a single mature oak produces hundreds of thousands of litres of oxygen per year and supports thousands of species of birds, insects, lichen and fungus. Residents and councils regularly clash over urban tree-felling. However, when Sheffield City Council entered into a contractor programme a few years ago, which felled more than 5,000 trees, the protests made international news . Councils are wary of street tree issues now, and often try to manage PR by claiming felling is mitigated by planting several smaller trees to replace each large one removed. When local authorities like Swansea City Council claim development will result in “ more trees ” they are of course right, but it is not the full story. Just as any child would understand they were being ripped off if given a 2p piece and a 1p piece to replace a pound coin, removing large species trees and replacing them with small ones results in a net loss of ecosystem services. Joe Coles , the urban tree campaigner responsible for conservation charity Woodland Trust’s work in Sheffield, describes this as a form of greenwashing. “If we value green infrastructure to the same level as grey then large street trees will become far too valuable to lose”, he tells me. “Until there is acceptance that large trees, taking decades to reach maturity, have significant value – a fact based on scientific evidence – we will continue to see spurious but convenient assertions that higher numbers of small replacement trees are adequate compensation to facilitate development.” Size really matters with trees. The annual net ecological benefit of planting a large species tree is 92% greater than planting a small one. Mature street trees do everything from having a positive effect on infant birth weight in lower socio-economic demographics, to increasing resilience to major life events among people who live within sight of them. Consumers spend more on streets that are lined with large trees . Large street trees are the most valuable green infrastructure asset cities have and when that value is overlooked, disasters happen. Even winning the UK’s “tree of the year” competition in 2020 couldn’t save Hackney’s Happy Man Tree from being felled in 2021 to make way for a new housing development. More than 25,000 petitioners objected to the removal of the healthy, 150-year-old London plane, with even the developers admitting it would have been avoidable had earlier consultation taken place. There is hope for change in the form of tree strategies which set policies to guide development and planning and which require community consultation. They are a valuable tool for stewarding urban trees for future generations. Bristol, perhaps the UK’s flagship green city, has adopted a tree replacement standard to ensure planting new trees meaningfully offsets the loss of carbon and ecosystem services where felling cannot be avoided. Tree replacement standards ensure an adequate number of trees are planted to offset each lost and quantifies the financial contribution developers must make if they choose to fell. Even tree-war epicentre Sheffield has moved forwards, bringing people together to develop a new street tree partnership working strategy that values street trees for the benefits they bring to people, the city and the environment. These strategies allow local authorities to mandate that developers value tree size and the total canopy cover in a city. The idea is to prevent the use of “stem counts” to hide the removal of large trees and their replacement with smaller trees that are less valuable in terms of carbon storage, ecosystem services and even human wellbeing. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

How saving one mature street tree is better for us than planting a load of new ones

Egle-K

Older trees give character and 'soul' to a street. They feel safe, secure, or sometimes scary at night, and they have beauty that newly planted trees take a long time to grow to.

Piri

Egle-K i agree with you! In Lithuania we are lucky to have greenery around in the cities, feels so natural and maybe not always appreciated. Just was wondering like Liberty avenue in Kaunas is a quite unique pedestrian path.

Egle-K

Piri Liberty avenue in Kaunas

Love it. Every city needs streets with lines of trees, it is how streets should be.

Skylar

It just makes sense to save the older trees for so many reasons.

They are beautiful in their own special ways, and they hold a lot of carbon.

But also they are full of memories, they define a place and are a constant when things change around. The house that someone grew up in might change completely by the time they are adult and somebody else lives there, but the tree outside the window will be the same and full of memories.

So Veli

Mature street trees do everything from having a positive effect on infant birth weight in lower socio-economic demographics

This is amazing.

Vilte

Of course this should be obvious. It's all fine to plant new trees but it makes much more sense if we are not cutting down all of the ones that we already have.

The amount of things living in, on, and under these old trees are amazing. They are like whole little worlds of their own.

Piri

Vilte Of course this should be obvious

It should, like many things 🙂

Julie Brooks-Girskiene

Vilte The amount of things living in, on, and under these old trees are amazing. They are like whole little worlds of their own.

I remember way back when I was a kid (so long ago 🙂), at school we had these little clear pots to collect with a magnifying lid to look through, to collect and study 'minibeasts'.

The amount of different things you could find living around the bottom of trees was amazing, and some of them were kinda scary when you magnify them a bit!

Arvīds

Vilte The amount of things living in, on, and under these old trees are amazing.

True, Spiders, insects, mice, small birds, squirrels. And all of the things under the soil as well.

John

Julie Brooks-Girskiene little clear pots to collect with a magnifying lid to look through

I remember those, and I think they had a little grid of squares drawn on the bottom of the pot so you could use them to measure how big the minibeast was.

Skylar

Arvīds Spiders, insects, mice

Hmmm, not really the favourite creatures of most people. 😁

Julie Brooks-Girskiene

Skylar Hmmm, not really the favourite creatures of most people. 😁

Maybe but the we need them all, especially those spiders 🕷️

https://ekodiena.com/we-are-not-doing-nearly-enough-to-protect-spiders/

Treebeard

Trees over a certain age should be legally protected. If a construction project thinks they are in the way then they should have to pay to move them if possible or build around them. They should only be cut down if they are sick or in real danger of falling and hurting people or damaging something.

Piri

Treebeard

There are quite a bunch of laws about trees. You can't just cut a tree if you want even in your own land. As you mentioned you can get permission if it is sick or high risk of danger.

In come cases, like chestnut trees disease some years ago, the trees were treated and protected.

Treebeard

Piri There are quite a bunch of laws about trees.

I think in Lithuania the laws are probably good, in most of Europe probably they are not so bad, but I am sure there are a lot of places where that is not the fact.

Ash

It is a shame that trees are being lost frequently over here in the UK. I've always loved the look of an urban environment that still has a lot of greenery and it would be a huge shame to lose that.

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