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Hacking and lopping trees is not the answer
• I READ about the near-crushing of Abdul Rashid (Driver knocked unconscious by falling tree was ‘lucky to survive’, May 7) with horror.
Though this happened over the Westminster boundary, it could just as easily have happened in Camden.
Because while Camden pursues its current policy of hacking and lopping its street trees, we can be sure that more events of this sort will occur and with potentially less fortunate outcomes.
The current programme of hacking by amateurs must stop.
Leaving stumps and branch ends exposed leaves the tree open to infection by various fungi (as is suspected to have happened in Mr Rashid’s case).
It also encourages in many cases the kind of bushy sub-growth that actually increases water use (and therefore potential clay shrinkage) as the tree tries desperately to maintain its energy balance.
It is possible to control tree growth by careful treatment; many private householders do this.
But hacking a tree to shreds and leaving it as a collection of ugly stumps is not the way.
James Brander
Hadley Street, NW1
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