I live near a group of beautiful, mature trees that spread across a corner of two residential roads; they are a community hub, providing a shady place to sit and chat. They are much loved, all covered by tree protection orders, and provided as a gift in perpetuity to the community in the 1980s as a planning condition for the creation of a business park. Forty years on, none of this seems to matter. Where bricks and mortar and making money are concerned, trees have no voice: they die silently, even amid a climate emergency that now brings extreme temperatures to London and the south-east of England with alarming regularity.
After years reporting on the battles of ordinary people to protect trees from bulldozers and chainsaws, I find myself in the midst of one. It is an emotionally sapping, frustrating fight against developers who want to destroy the trees and build luxury homes. It does not seem to matter that the council in question, Richmond upon Thames, a Liberal Democrat-run borough with a strong collection of Green councillors, declared a climate emergency in 2019. Nor that it launched its biodiversity action plan with much fanfare at a May 2019 event where the star speaker was David Attenborough, a local resident. The mantra at the time was “think globally, act locally, make a home for nature”. Alongside the launch, the council printed thousands of leaflets headlined “Local wildlife needs your help”, advising residents how they could support wildlife habitats in the urban environment.
