Latest news with #treefelling
CTV News
28-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
B.C. court awards $22K in damages in neighbour dispute over trees
A B.C. judge has settled a dispute between neighbours over the felling of five fir trees, describing the case as a 'dismal and avoidable exercise.' Shelagh Margaret Prowal filed a civil suit seeking $100,000 in damages for trespassing during an incident in which a contractor hired by her neighbours chopped down the 30-metre-tall trees on her Boston Bar property, according to a decision posed online Tuesday. The neighbours, Sean Kevin Court and Trista Lynn Court, did not dispute that they told a hired tree faller to cut down the mature Douglas Firs. 'The defendants do not dispute that the trees were cut on their instructions, or that the trees were located on the plaintiff's property: they allege that the plaintiff provided consent,' Justice David A. Crerar's decision said. The decision – which awarded Prowal just over $22,000 in damages – came after a trial that saw problematic testimony from the both the plaintiff and the defendant, Sean Court. 'Neither were particularly credible or reliable witnesses. Both were argumentative and evasive in answering questions: their mutual antipathy was apparent. Both admitted and displayed that their memories and attentions to detail were imprecise. Their memories of the felling day were also incomplete and hazy,' the judge wrote. A dearth of evidence was also noted – including the failure of either party to call a key witness and the absence of photographs of the fallen trees. Further, the evidence that was presented was 'murky,' according to the judge. 'The court must, as best as it can, decide this dispute on the limited evidence before it,' the decision said. The relationship between the neighbours was one plagued by conflict including the installation of no trespassing signs, squabbles over a well, and multiple police complaints. The court heard. In the years leading up to the 2021 incident there were 'only a few interactions' – all of which were hostile. Court, in his testimony, said he told the tree faller to cut down his neighbour's trees after she explicitly told him he could during a spontaneous conversation in the yard. Prowal denied giving her neighbour permission and said she was unaware the trees were cut down until weeks later, when she saw the stumps and filed a police report. Given the strained relationship, the judge found it unlikely things unfolded the way Court said they did. 'It is implausible that Mr. Court would casually call over the wall and propose or request the significant undertaking of felling five trees, in a very brief and sudden conversation,' Crerar wrote. 'Nor is plausible that the plaintiff would casually, promptly and unambiguously provide authorization for the felling of these trees: it is clear that she is not a casual or easygoing person, especially in her dealings with the defendants.' The judge did, however, allow for the possibility that a boarder on Prowal's property said something to Court that he interpreted as permission to cut the trees down. The boarder, the decision noted repeatedly, did not testify. But Prowal 'acknowledged' that she sent him to speak with Court and inquire about the price of cutting down trees on the day they were ultimately cut down. 'Objectively viewed, such an inquiry, delivered through an imprecise vessel such as (the boarder), may well have been misinterpreted, and now misremembered by Mr. Court, as consent to fell the trees,' the decision said. This was not enough to establish consent, but the judge found it mitigated Court's culpability for the trespassing. Prowal claimed $50,000 in damages for 'loss of enjoyment and amenities' and the cost of replacing the trees, the decision said. She told the court – among other things – that she enjoyed watching wildlife in the trees, used one to hang a clothesline from, and enjoyed the shade the trees provided. 'The fact that the plaintiff did not notice the loss of the trees until two weeks after the event somewhat undermines her testimony as to their importance in her daily life,' the judge wrote. An expert arborist told the court the maximum cost of replacing the trees would be $25,900. The judge found there was no evidence Prowal had 'any intention' of actually replacing the trees and so reduced the amount by 25 per cent to reflect the 'timber market price' – for total damages of $19,425. Prowal also sought $50,000 in punitive damages – calculated on the basis of $10,000 per tree. Crerar rejected this, finding a much lower award of $2,000 was warranted on the ground that Court's actions were 'reckless' but that he had not 'flagrantly and deliberately proceeded to have the trees felled.' Prowal was also awarded $1,500 to reimburse her for the cost of a necessary land survey for a total of $22,925 in damages.
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
'Chainsaw massacre' that saw 110 trees chopped down in dead of night in city centre without telling anyone cost council at least £3.3m
A Labour council's decision to cut down more than 100 trees in the middle of a city centre has cost them at least £3.3m, a report has found. Plymouth City Council (PCC) sparked outrage when its group of 'monsters in the night' felled 110 trees on the city's Armada Way in March 2023 in what was described as a 'chainsaw massacre'. The move was part of a regeneration project but furious campaigners labelled it 'ecological vandalism'. And according to an independent review into the council's actions, the tree-felling 'still reverberates today'. The review led by a panel of independent experts through Solace, explored how decisions were made, how the project was managed, and how the council communicated with the public. The report added that 'significant tensions' remain within the council and between the groups and individuals involved. The 79-page report, which looks at the timeframe of the Armada Way plan, added: 'It is apparent that there are wounds still to be healed for those individuals most directly impacted. 'There are pockets of regret, remorse, guilt, blame and defiance.' In response, the council acknowledged weaknesses in the delivery of the project and said lessons would be learned. They also provided an estimate of the costs involved including legal costs, inflationary increases, staff time and the £130,000 spent on the review itself. The report said: 'Understandably, no quantification has been made of the cost to the City Council of reputational damage or the cost of re-building trust.' It added: 'More significantly, no assessment has been made of the costs to business and the lost revenue to the local economy from having the key artery of the city centre so impacted.' It said the £3.3m figure was 'the lower end of the likely cost' and said this showed the importance of major projects being 'adequately resourced with 'thorough political and senior officer oversight'. The council said the £3.3m figure was 'the lower end of the likely cost' and said this showed the importance of major projects being 'adequately resourced with 'thorough political and senior officer oversight' Armada Way started as a circa £12.7m project and is now projected at circa £30m. Campaigners brought a case to the High Court in March 2024 claiming that Plymouth City Council had acted unlawfully. The case was dismissed but Judge David Elvin KC was scathing of the council's conduct relating to the hearing and said the local authority's production of evidence had been 'highly unsatisfactory and revealed the lack of transparency in its procedures'. The report added: 'It is important that the council finds a means to rebuild trust, internally and externally, if it is going to maximise the benefit to its citizens that its strong regeneration programme should bring to the city.' PCC Chief Executive Tracey Lee said apologised and said the council 'came up short of where we needed to be'. She said: 'The issues highlighted in this report are not reflective of the vast majority of what we do. But they do show us where we need to improve. 'We are committed to being a learning organisation - one that reflects honestly, adapts, and grows from experience. That's not just important for us as a Council - it's vital for the people we serve. When we learn, we improve.. And when we improve, we deliver better outcomes for our communities.' Ms Lee emphasised that Plymouth City Council is not 'anti-tree', adding that there are 'over 35,000 new trees growing and establishing across the city'. She added: 'This has resulted in us being recognised by the Tree Cities of the World programme. But we are also ambitious for Plymouth. We want this city to grow - and that means making difficult decisions. 'This review was about how we made those decisions, and it's evident that we didn't always get it right. We are committed to learning from this experience and doing better.'
BBC News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Plymouth tree felling fiasco cost more than £3.3m
A Devon council's decision to cut down more than 100 trees at night has cost more than £3.3m, a damning report has "shock to the organisation" of the tree-felling carried out by Plymouth City Council in March 2023 "still reverberates today", according to an independent review into the council's review said there were still "significant tensions" as a result of the tree felling, both within the council and "between the groups and individuals involved" with "wounds still to be healed".Plymouth City Council acknowledged weaknesses in the delivery of the project and said lessons would be learned. The council provided an estimate of the costs involved including legal costs, inflationary increases, staff time and the £130,000 spent on the review review's authors said there had been no quantification of the "reputational damage or the cost of re-building trust" which "have the potential to add costs to future council projects and endeavours". The report added: "More significantly, no assessment has been made of the costs to business and the lost revenue to the local economy from having the key artery of the city centre so impacted."It said the £3.3m figure was "the lower end of the likely cost" and said this showed the importance of major projects being "adequately resourced with "thorough political and senior officer oversight".The original scheme was set to cost £12.7m. Plymouth City Council has brought forward a new scheme for Armada Way at a cost of about £30m which is currently being worked on. 'Too little, too late' The review was highly critical of the management of the council by both politicians and the paid said "sustained managerial grip by senior politicians and officers" was "lacking at crucial points".The report said: "When issues came to a head, senior politicians ducked and senior officers failed to anticipate the media frenzy and the impact of [anticipated] legal action."It said staff did not feel protected by managers and said: "In this instance, the reflection was almost unanimous that the managerial response was both too little and too late." 'Guilt, blame and defiance' The review explored how decisions were made, how the project was managed and how the council communicated with the brought a case to the High Court in March 2024 claiming that Plymouth City Council had acted case was dismissed but Judge David Elvin KC was scathing of the council's conduct relating to the hearing and said the local authority's production of evidence had been "highly unsatisfactory".The review published on Thursday said it was "apparent that there are wounds still to be healed for those individuals most directly impacted". It said there were "pockets of regret, remorse, guilt, blame and defiance" and the council needed to find a way "to rebuild trust, internally and externally". The city council's £185,000-a-year chief executive, Tracey Lee, apologised and said the authority "came up short of where we needed to be".She said the issues in the report were "not reflective of the vast majority of what we do" but showed where improvement was said: "We are committed to being a learning organisation - one that reflects honestly, adapts and grows from experience."That's not just important for us as a council - it's vital for the people we serve. "When we learn, we improve and when we improve, we deliver better outcomes for our communities."Ms Lee said Plymouth was not "anti-tree" and she added that there were now "35,000 new trees growing and establishing across the city".
Telegraph
20-05-2025
- Telegraph
‘They're like humans': Why we grieve the loss of a special tree
This is a fairy tale about trees. It has good knights and shadowy rogues and great gnarly oaks and elms of Olde England. But it is a modern story, so there's also conceptual art, existential environmental angst, and, of course, the double-edged sword of social media. My search for the source of our national obsession with trees begins in the North of England, under the noisy kittiwakes of Tyne Bridge, as two men go into the dock at Newcastle Crown Court. The trial of Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers, the two men accused of felling the Sycamore Gap tree – an historic landmark of northern England – was set to be a spectacle. These unlikely criminal masterminds had triggered the rage of a nation. I attended the first two days of the trial, as the jury was selected and sworn in and the prosecution opened its case – with Richard Wright KC railing against the pair's 'moronic mission' to fell the 200-year-old sycamore next to Hadrian's Wall in 2023 – and couldn't help feeling that the whole affair was rather sad and surreal. Here were two individuals, found guilty a fortnight later, that might face jail time when they are sentenced in July. It would be the first time anyone has received a custodial sentence in Britain for tree felling. But, of course, this was no ordinary tree, this was a symbol. But of what? Locals in Newcastle had plenty to say about the case, but only on assurance of anonymity. That tree is a tricky subject about which to sit on the fence. Film of the felling was shown, and the judge repeatedly counselled jury members to recuse themselves if they felt too emotionally distraught. The man next to me in the public gallery told me he had proposed to his wife at Sycamore Gap. But outside of the courtroom, responses were nuanced. 'Locals hardly thought about the tree until it was gone,' said one man, adding that they only got angry when others got angry on X and Facebook. One Newcastle business owner thought that the response was absurd. 'We need to keep it in perspective. It's had more press than the murder of a local teenage girl,' she claimed. 'But I don't want a brick through my window for being a tree hater.' Tree haters and tree huggers: have trees now become another part of our polarised discourse? Could there be an element of virtue signalling to this outpouring of grief? 'Tree people are good people,' observes artist Nancy Cadogan whose Lost Trees series of paintings (which go on view at the Garden Museum in London this June), memorialise some 20 felled trees. The last in the series features Sycamore Gap. 'This project started to germinate back in 2022 as a result of HS2 felling trees within my area. I was struck by an extraordinary intensity of emotion and grief surrounding the felling of the trees, and a feeling of powerlessness that accompanied this,' says Cadogan. 'I then realised that the felling of trees affects people in communities around the country, in both urban and rural areas and wanted to explore the effects of that in my work.' The result is a series of stylised and elegiac landscapes. Cadogan's project is just one of several current art projects that highlight the importance of our trees. But it was ever thus. It seems that our emotional attachment to trees is firmly rooted in Britain's cultural output: trees feature in our poetry, prose and television shows. They provide the scaffolding to the verse of Shakespeare, Hardy, Larkin and Longfellow and stand proud in the paintings of Constable, Turner and Palmer. The villains in this arboreal fairy tale fit into three camps. There are the 'morons' like Graham and Carruthers, who cut down trees on a whim or a grudge. Then there are councils who, some critics claim, are chopping down trees at the same rate they are monetising – and littering – our pavements with forests of e-bikes. Finally, there is the classic malefactor: the greedy property developer. Historically, cutting down trees was an act of war. Caesar destroyed the sacred oaks of the Druids and, in more recent times, Israeli settlers have targeted Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank. 'It has reached a crescendo,' stated a spokesperson for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation in 2010. 'What might look like ad hoc violence is actually a tool the settlers are using to push back Palestinian farmers from their own land.' Today, in Britain, the motives behind tree vandalism are often unclear. Having pleaded not guilty, Graham and Carruthers failed to explain their actions. Similarly, the felling by the Toby Carvery restaurant chain of a 500-year-old oak at Whitewebbs Park in Enfield this spring has left everyone confused. Was the tree dead, as Toby Carvery has claimed, or alive as the council insists? Investigations continue. While cutting down any unsightly, unwanted or inconveniently-placed tree is unlikely to see you in a Crown Court, the Northumberland sycamore was exceptional. Not only well known, and eminently photogenic – Instagrammable, we might say – it was supposedly worth the extraordinarily specific sum of £622,191. It was valued using the Capital Asset Value for Amenity Trees (CAVAT) system, which is the recognised methodology for assigning a monetary figure to a tree in a public space. (It is distinct from Tree Preservation Orders, or TPOs, which are often cited in development disputes.) The metrics by which CAVAT arrives at its magic number are, arguably, somewhat subjective. A tree is judged on its health, age, crown size and, less scientifically quantifiable, its contribution to public welfare. The most expensive tree in Britain is in Berkeley Square – known as the Berkeley Plane – with a reported value of £750,000. A tree's fame, location and owner all play a part. It's a class system for trees and the truth is that we value some more than others. To address this disparity, the Woodland Trust launched a Charter for Trees, Woods and People in 2017. Some 70 organisations and 300 community groups collected more than 60,000 stories, delving into what people love about their local trees. From these, a set of principles was formed, including planting for the future, making trees accessible to all and protecting irreplaceable specimens. While the Woodland Trust, along with the National Trust and English Heritage, does much to educate the public about the beauty and wellbeing of the nation's woodland there is also the Downton Abbey factor. Downton did for towering oaks what Eastenders does for cockney pubs. Heritage television broadcasts sweeping vistas of sculpted parks and arboretums into our living rooms. Location scouts seek out atmospheric forests, coppices and thickets: they provide the perfect backdrop for moody meetings and passionate trysts. And their moment in the limelight – the Sycamore Gap's cameo in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is another example – is well deserved and telling: the stately homes of Britain are the custodians of much of the nation's ancient woodland. 'I recognise how important trees are to everyone's existence,' says Dave Cullum, the parks and gardens manager for Boughton Estate in Northamptonshire, seat of the 10th Duke of Buccleuch. Cullum is responsible for the 'pretty stuff' surrounding the house – nicknamed 'The English Versailles' – including most of the 'veteran' trees and a network of tree-lined avenues that link to some 2,500 acres of woodland. The avenues have been devastated by Dutch elm disease, but Cullum is gradually reintroducing elms, as well as planting poplars and lime trees. The estate's trees are much loved by the Montagu family, who have owned the property since the 17 th century. 'They're amazing custodians,' says Cullum. 'If it were purely financial, you'd probably not provide the care that we give to some of the trees; you'd probably just cut the tree down and start again. But we obviously recognise the importance of maintaining that backbone. They harbour everything – memory and ecology – they connect to each other.' The Boughton estate works with the Rural Crime Team, a dedicated section of the British police force, as well as government bodies such as the Environment Agency and Natural England, to safeguard the trees and other elements of the landscape. So, does Cullum have his favourite trees on the estate? 'There are some, but don't tell the others. In particular, we have a fantastic oak that sits in an area we call Weekley Park. Not only does it carry great age, it has a magnificent crown structure. It defines itself.' Cullum also likes a small, knotty field maple – 'almost a hollow stem' – that sits quietly at the edge of the garden. 'No one really takes it in, but it has its own merit,' he says. And there are many more. 'I've been here for 22 years and I couldn't leave them. That's how it becomes, it gets you. You become a little bit like one of the elves from Lord of the Rings.' Of course, Britain is not alone in its love of trees. 'In every country there should be laws that protect trees,' says Giuseppe Penone, the Italian conceptual artist whose tree-related retrospective, Thoughts in the Roots, is on view at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Penone says we should take a leaf out of The White Goddess, Robert Graves' famous book on myth-making: 'He says that the decadence of humanity began when the penalty for cutting down a tree was no longer capital punishment.' For half a century, Penone has created sculptures and installations that riff on the fluidity of trees, an obsession dating back to his youth growing up in the mountains of Italy. 'I remember a hollow thousand-year-old chestnut tree, which you could access from a small opening and several children could fit inside,' he tells me. 'It was a constant stimulus for the imagination of our games.' Penone's show coincides with the inauguration of the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion, A Capsule in Time, by the Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, which features a semi-mature Ginkgo tree at its heart. The gallery has security in place to contend with vandals. In Nordic countries, trees are a part of daily life. Disagreements about trees are the most common conflict between neighbours in Norway, observes Lars Mytting, the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood: The guide to chopping, stacking and drying wood the Scandinavian way. 'We have several rules that try to lower the tension, but they come up very often. One of the rules is that if a third of your tree could fall onto the neighbour's ground if felled, you can be forced to cut the top of the tree.' Mytting visited Sycamore Gap during an author tour to a bookshop in Corbridge. 'The felling must be one of the crudest, most stupid and culturally sadistic acts I ever have heard about,' he tells me. 'I guess we are so connected to trees because they are a bit like humans – alive, individual, stout but also fragile – and because they can outlive us by many generations.' Scandinavians largely consider trees as agricultural features rather than emotional trigger points. 'However, one tree of great significance was the 'Royal Birch' in Molde on the west coast of Norway, where a famous photo was taken of King Haakon and Prince Olav in 1940 before they went on the ship to London. That became an emblem of our wartime resistance. But, in 1981, stupid vandals almost managed to cut it down and the tree did not survive.' A new birch was planted by King Olav in 1982, Mytting tells me, but that later fell during a storm. 'And so we planted another, which is still there,' says Mytting. 'I guess you have to do the same with the Sycamore Gap Tree. It may be another tree but it will still be the Sycamore Gap Tree.' All fairy tales need sages. Enter, from woodland right, two of our national treasures. In 2017, Dame Judi Dench explained her adoration of trees in a BBC documentary. 'My life now is trees and Champagne,' she said. Michael Morpurgo, the beloved author of War Horse, is equally enamoured. In 2023, Morpurgo published My Heart Was a Tree, a collection of tree-related poems and stories. 'Every day that I can, I go for a walk in the bluebell woods behind our house,' he writes in the introduction. 'I know every one of the trees I pass. They hear me coming, they listen to me. I listen to them, to the whisper of them, the roaring of them, the creaking of them.' At his house in the heart of Devon, Morpurgo takes me on a tour of the trees in his garden: vigorous camellias, a mulberry, a large Bramley apple tree. Over their canopies, one can see the crest of Dartmoor. 'We notice them more than any other flower, they're always there,' Morpurgo says. 'They age like us, they wrinkle like us, they fall to pieces like us.' In the mid-1970s, Michael and his wife Clare founded Farms for City Children, a charity based in a local Victorian manor and a nearby farm, which introduces youngsters from urban environments to country ways. 'We've done a lot of planting of trees down on the farm. It's a work task which we've indulged in for the last 50 years when the kids come down,' says Morpurgo. 'Because we want them to feel that what they do will live on.' Morpurgo's friend and Devon neighbour, the late poet laureate Ted Hughes, equated trees with kin in his poem My Own True Family. The poem delivers a warning from the trees themselves: Hughes' theme of nature's reproach proved prophetic. Trees have become a totem for issues surrounding the climate crisis. They are often seen as the answer. 'Trees change everything,' says MIT Professor Sheila Kennedy, whose TREE FORM project is showcased at this year's Venice Biennale of Architecture. It proposes the use of branching tree forks in the building industry rather than relying on carbon-intensive materials, in the same way that chefs champion 'whole animal butchery'. A composition of branching trees, says Kennedy, 'can create new spaces for working, gathering and living that benefit people, forests and the spaces that each inhabits.' Kennedy also suggests that living trees might one day be incorporated into the structure of buildings, where they could provide 'oxygen, shade, wellness and inspiration, if they have generous access to sunlight, soil and water,' she says. 'There's a long history of using trees to support building structures, so it's fascinating to imagine an architecture of living trees and maybe one that cooperates with sustainable harvested branching trees.' There is a view that trees are becoming secular icons of worship. 'I think they always have been,' says Morpurgo. 'It's interesting how we get taken back to our earlier times. Down here there is a great tradition of carvings in churches of the Green Man [a pagan tree person and symbol of fertility which also appeared on the invitation to King Charles' coronation]. It's a growing person and a tree talking together and becoming one. It's the whole business of our shared life on this planet. Trees are an emblem for that. In a way, they've been the polar bear or the elephant of how we see our local nature.' A seismic, but much needed, shift has occurred in attitudes towards trees, says Morpurgo. 'That all trees are doing some good to us on this planet has been a late realisation amongst us all.' And perhaps that recognition – one that requires constant reinforcement – is as close as we will get to a fairy tale ending to this story.
The Sun
17-05-2025
- Sport
- The Sun
Chelsea star locked in neighbour row over plans to axe 40ft trees and build cinema & games room at his luxury home
CHELSEA goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli has kicked off a row with neighbours after chopping down huge 40ft trees at his Surrey mansion. The Blues' stopper was given the go-ahead to extend his luxury pad near the club's Cobham training ground - complete with a cinema and games room. 4 4 Planners at the local council told him he could chop down two trees to make way for the proposed development but neighbours say he has razed more to the ground - without permission. They claim the 30-40ft trees are decades old, although not protected by a Tree Preservation Order, and help prevent overlooking on the leafy estate. The former Fulham goalkeeper was initially granted planning permission for a front and rear extension including a ground floor family room, kitchen and breakfast room and cinema. He also wants to demolish a porch and chimney stack and add dormer windows for a fourth bedroom and games room on the second floor. Documents filed at Elmbridge Borough Council state that building work started last year but has not yet been completed. Bettinelli, 32, has now submitted amended plans for tree planting and landscaping to allow for the removal of trees. In a letter of objection, one resident wrote: "The initial proposal for 'bush and hedge pruning' turned into the felling of multiple 30ft trees, decades old. "This has significantly affected local wildlife (there were documented owls nesting) and privacy/light shading of multiple properties around. "The new proposal to replace four trees is well short of any remedial measure in my view and should be significantly enhanced." Chaos at Stamford Bridge as Djurgarden fans jump over barriers and clash in away end against Chelsea Another neighbour wrote: "More hedging has been removed to erect the fence. "This was not done by the neighbouring property. "And versus the previous plan, there is now less commitment to hedging than before. "As a reminder, 30-40ft trees were cut down without permission. "There should be no reduction in commitment shown on the plan versus the one before." Bettinelli joined Chelsea in 2021 to boost the Blues' goalkeeping ranks following the departure of Willy Caballero, having been out of contract at Fulham. He spent a decade at Craven Cottage, making 120 appearances for the Whites and also represented England 's under-21 team earlier in his career. The 6ft,4in stopper bought his Cobham pad for £1.5million in September, 2023, before applying for a Grand Designs-style makeover. In another objection, the local residents' association said it was "saddened and deeply concerned that the developer, architect and builder have breached the conditions imposed on the allowed application". They added: "Mature trees provide benefits to humans and wildlife alike, trees also provide wildlife corridors to and from the surrounding green spaces, woods, commons and heathland of Cobham. "Trees also provide screening to neighbours' properties and garden amenity spaces which they should be able to continue the enjoyment of using for everyday activity without the perception of overlooking." Council officials are expected to make a decision on the trees later this month. Bettinelli's planning agent was approached for comment. 4
