Any tree specialists about?

[tereasagreen]

I've namechanged for this to protect my real life identity.

I live on a new housing development which is around 15 years or so old. There quite a few areas of woodland around the estate, and the one nearest my house has 15-20 poplar trees which are to be felled by the developer next month. They have said that the poplar trees were planted in order to provide wind cover for the other trees. I have no idea what the others are, but the area looks nice, the children love playing there and all the local residents are against the removal of any of the trees.

I am meeting the tree officer from the local council on Friday to discuss this with him. Both the developer and the tree officer have said that the trees will be removed. We only have a few weeks to campaign against this.

However, I don't want to campaign to keep the trees if it really is better that they be removed. I am as far from knowledgeable about trees as you can get, but I really like the look of the woodland area and my 4 year old is really upset about the removal of so many trees. As I said, local residents are all united in wanting to keep the trees. As far as we know, there are no safety issues.

I am asking for the wisdom of mumsnetters, really. Any ideas?

Just to add, I've posted in chat too.

Poplars are quite a short lived tree and tend to split and drop branches etc as they get older. I suspect that it is with this in mind that the developer is keen to get them down sooner rather than later especially as they are near houses and children play underneath them.

A lot of young trees grow better if they are underneath other trees and then once they are established the bigger trees can be removed. If the tree officer confirmed that is what is to happen then it sounds as if they are working to a prearranged plan which was probably a condition of the planning consent for the development. Its really unlikely that the tree officer would be agreeing to the removal of trees if there wasn't a plan in place to replace them.

HTH

Thanks for this, it is helpful. We arranged a site visit today and the tree officer was able to reassure us. He also saw the impact the work would have and agreed that it might be necessary to plant one or two replacement trees.