It is not only the big, old “forest trees” that are, as George Monbiot writes, the threatened “keystone structures” for our ecology (The gift we should give to the living world? Time, and lots of it, 8 August). Our cities too, and the green spaces within them, are home to essential canopies of magnificent trees, many well over 100 years old, but equally threatened. “Natural capital accounting” and the business bottom line is here also to blame.
One serious example is the longstanding policy of insurance companies to escape the cost of remedial work on properties with subsidence by blaming it on the root systems of long-established trees nearby. They demand felling, and the essential green cover and all the beneficial ecosystems are lost for ever. If the landowner, normally a local authority, is determined to retain its trees then the insurers pursue them for every cost. Few have sufficient resources. The insurance industry needs to realise that such a policy not only destroys the irreplaceable mature greenery of our cities, but also contributes to the extreme weather events that are generating more insurance claims.
Peter Sparks
Cambridge
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