Almost 455,000 trees have been felled across the country by local councils over the past 10 years, i can reveal.
Campaigners have said more must be done to preserve trees and have accused councils of prioritising planning developments over environmental concerns.
Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent to all 382 councils in the UK revealed North Lanarkshire felled the highest amount of trees at 31,480, followed by Birmingham with 21,486 and Hampshire County with 18,535 trees felled over the last decade.
If they planted that many, only one in ten need to survive
The ecosystem of a mature tree is vastly different to that of a sapling.
Bristol Trees have a very cool calculator that illustrates the impact of replacing mature trees with saplings on CO2 - it takes about 35 years to get back to the same amount of CO2 loss. CO2 isn’t the only thing that matters to the environment either, but you’d hope councils were aware of that too
So if they’re planting ten trees for every one they cut down, it only takes 3.5 years to break even then?
And after that, they’re reducing 9x the amount of Co2?
Oh no sorry, that 35 years was if you’re planting 10 trees for every 1 you cut down (have a look at the calculator!)