Date published: 2008/04/23
The BBC says:
A plane tree in central London has been valued at £750,000 under a new system that puts a "price" on trees. How?
A six-foot-wide plane in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, is thought to be the UK's most valuable tree.
Large, mature, city trees like this one are being blamed - sometimes wrongly and often fatally - for damage to neighbouring properties.
But it is hoped a new valuation system will make it harder for "expensive" trees to be felled due to doubtful suspicions they are to blame for subsidence.
So how are trees priced? Size is the biggest factor, followed by population density of the surrounding area (how many people enjoy the tree), the size of the canopy, its life expectancy, its impact (does it flower or drop annoying honeydew) and any special factors, such as Queen Victoria planting it.
The system has been trialled in London and is gradually being adopted by local authorities elsewhere, such as Bristol.
There was a previous method of tree valuation called Helliwell but it only measured the visual worth of a tree, says Jon Stokes of the Tree Council. This new system, devised by tree officer Chris Neilan, is more "complete".
"Ultimately the purpose is that more trees are saved, because you can say 'this tree has a relative value to this community'," says Mr Stokes.
Needless to say, any system that values trees in this way is completely arbitrary. And given the last statement of Stokes, it seems that the whole point of the exercise was just to increase the alleged value of trees so that fewer trees are cut down. Well, that is a laudible objective for all sorts of reasons, but using this pseudo-scientific methodology to justify it is ridiculous.
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").