A Stormont department has been accused of ‘underhand’ tactics after contractors cut down a row of Newry’s oldest oak trees at 4.15am.
Police were called to Greenbank Industrial Estate on Wednesday morning as one man took a last stand to try and save what was left.
Eamon Burke, who grew up under their branches, had been giving a voice to the plight of the 200-year-old oaks for months.
Read more: Newry men urge Sinn Fein to save 200-year-old oaks facing chop for flood scheme
But his pleas fell on deaf ears and the Department for Infrastructure greenlit their axe for a tidal flood alleviation scheme Eamon argued was not needed as the canal they grew along is not near the sea.
After scaling branches of the felled trees on site on Wednesday, he told police: “This is all part of the environment. There is no reason in the world that these trees have to come down.”
An officer trying to coax him down told Eamon the ‘best recourse would be to publicise this to the environment agency’.
“I am not being ignorant or nothing,” he responded. “I am going to have to be carried down out of here. I’m not coming down.”
Eamon tried for months to get DfI to find another way to deliver their flood alleviation plan. A total of 426 trees are being axed across three flood alleviation schemes in Belfast, Newry and Newcastle.
Eamon’s wife Bernadette said he was literally at the end of his rope before climbing the trees. Eamon later told us: “I’m gobsmacked.
“I thought it would never come to this - I thought we would have won the case. No one can win with the Rivers Agency.
“I fear for the future of wildlife down here.”
His friend and fellow campaigner John McCabe said: “It was very underhanded that contractors were instructed under the cover of darkness in the wee hours of the morning to wreak destruction in the felling of the last bastion of remaining oaks in Newry.
“An operation carried out in military precision - an attack against the environment, heritage and Irish culture, a kick back to colonialism only this directive didn’t come from an English King or Lord.”
A PSNI spokesperson said: “Police received a report of a protest within the vicinity of the Greenbank Industrial Estate, Newry, at 9am on Wednesday October 26th.
“Officers were in attendance.”
DfI said: "The flood risk in this area is real and continuing. Alternative methods were exhausted. Given the topography of the industrial estate it will act as a bowl and flood waters once they enter would be slow and difficult to remove. Risk of entrapment to people in the estate would be significant. The trees were removed to ensure site safety.
"We could not knowingly allow them to remain with the resultant safety risk, nor can we avoid completing the scheme without the risk to life and property from flooding."
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