HELP HARINGEY TREE PROTECTORS SAVE N4 PLANE TREE!

PLEASE HELP US SAVE THE OAKFIELD PLANE TREE for the final showdown.

STOP THE CHAINSAW MADNESS planned Thursday Nov 23 next week!

Hello, we are the Haringey Tree Protectors, a group of north London tree campaigners that includes local residents, neighbours, environmental campaigners, arboriculturalists and tree lovers.

It is now almost 18 months since we’ve been battling to save a 120-year-old healthy plane tree from being felled by two unscrupulous insurers Allianz and Aviva.

The tree in Stroud Green hit National and international press in March when it was covered in scaffolding, white plastic and our council Haringey spent £92,000 on a security operation for a week.

But it's at risk of being felled again on 23 November (next week!) by the council due to a bullying claim from insurer Allianz.

Last year, we climbed it, slept in it, sat at its trunk for days, weeks, months through all weathers and all kinds of threats. The tree saw hearings at the local court and high court.

It brought a community together.

It caught the imagination of national and international press, hooked by the magic and symbolism of what one majestic century old tree means in the age of climate crisis, floods and searing heat.

This is not just about one tree, this tree represents all the trees threatened by dubious insurance claims by global American corporations who blow green air about low carbon and climate targets but whose policies are gradually, one-by-one, stealthily stripping our urban streets bare of these Victorian beauties – the only natural air cooling and cleaning system we have.

The insurers don’t give a toss about the tree.

But we do.

The homeowners do.

The community does.

Insurers like Allianz and Avia need to fulfil their obligations to homeowners.

We want to lend support to fight one last legal battle. Please consider DONATING AGAIN and please SHARE THIS CROWDFUNDER far and wide

Thanks for everything you have done!!

Gio, Jo, Annette, Holly, Jane

Haringey Tree Protectors

[email redacted]

@justplanenews

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/186880499666276

OUR STORY

From April '22 to Oct 22, we occupied the wonderful tree in Oakfield Road after the council announced they were going to fell it due to a long running insurance claim from two insurers, Allianz and Aviva. There are 33 mature street trees also at risk in just 2 streets in our area of Stroud Green N4. There are 200 more threatened across the borough - possibly more now since the deadly hot summer of '22 - and many more thousands across the country.

BUT, WHY?

Simply put, since the 1970s, billionaire pound profit insurance companies have gradually established enough case precedents in law (civil or so-called 'tort' law) so they can avoid paying to underpin houses in subsidence claims. Insurers, using their own unchallenged arboricultural reports, have engineered a situation where they can pass costs for underpinning onto councils rather than paying for the work themselves - councils who usually can't or won't pay. (An important note here: insurers only have to show the tree is IMPLICATED in damage, not wholly responsible for it.) This results in thousands of mature healthy trees being felled. Beautiful trees that clean our air and lungs, cool our cities and sequester our carbon. Everyone knows we need trees to mitigate against the urban heat island and mature trees do so much more work than newly planted saplings that often die in the worsening UK summer droughts. This is all going on against a backdrop of climate collapse, in Europe's most nature-depleted country, that's us, the UK!

NUTS, ISN'T IT?

So, you might say, 'Well, it's just one tree, right?'

But incrementally, one-by-one and year-by-year, councils (pressured by insurers) are chopping into our mature tree stock and denuding our streets. Since 2008, Haringey has felled well over 3000 street trees and many of these cases will be from insurance claims - we don't know how many as they don't keep the kind of useful detailed data we need!)

Don't get us started on privately owned trees in gardens and on private land - councils don't keep data on these either, only the TPO'd ones. (TPO = tree protection order.) We know there's been a stripping of funds to councils since austerity BUT stripping our streets of trees is going to be hugely more costly in the long term - in more ways than one.

WHY THIS TREE?

We have been fighting to try and save this tree, yes. But of course, our aims are not just about just one tree, this is a test case. With your very appreciated help, our target is much wider. We want to challenge the way insurers are holding residents and councils in a stranglehold despite what they say on their Climate Target pages. Well, this greenwash won't wash any longer. As well as lobbying our council locally, we want to broaden our reach nationally, to try to establish new policy in statute to tighten protections for existing trees.

NATIONAL TREE COALITION

We are taking steps to set up a national coalition of tree groups to see how we can go about lobbying for a change in the law. These groups, from Sheffield to Plymouth from Bristol to Wellingborough are all joining with us to form a stronger national working group to plan how we might take steps to change the law around trees.

OUR DREAM GOALS?

-That trees are totally left out of house insurance subsidence claims

-That new developers are legally obliged to retain mature trees in their plans

-That mature trees are protected by statute - just like heritage buildings

-A country wide educational outreach programme teaches residents about the value of mature trees in their gardens

WHY WE NEED FUNDS?

Sadly, our campaigning work costs money - for legal costs, printing flyers, consulting professionals and occupying trees currently at risk. (We are a small group working voluntarily outside of life, work and family obligations.) We're also lobbying the council to spend their tree budget on preventative measures to improve conditions for trees - bigger soil pits and irrigation systems, community watering programs, a revival of a tree warden scheme for different wards and many other suggestions.

Please spread the word to chip in a donation to enable STOP THE CHAINSAW MADNESS - the incremental stripping of mature trees from our streets and green spaces. Trees are the greatest green friends we have to mitigate and protect us as temperatures and droughts increase. We all need to challenge the threats towards trees by insurers, developers, planners and housing builders.

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Thanks, the Haringey Tree Protectors!