Truths and myths surrounding roadside tree-cutting
Of the Czech Road and Motorway Directorate's 1,938 trees, a total of 1,862 are slated to be felled because of the tree's state of health (dead or sick), and a mere 76 because they endanger the flow of traffic in a manner that cannot be resolved through technical means.
Although we have repeatedly responded to questions from journalists by reiterating that it is not true that the directorate has planned across-the-board tree-cutting, this legend has taken on as a life of its own - most recently being recycled by ČTK: The Road and Motorway Directorate wanted to cut 9,000 trees during the winter season because they are dangerous to drivers.
This claim is false for several reasons. Firstly, this number of 9,000 trees, which was released by the Czech Environmental Inspection sometime in February, includes trees along class I roads administered by the Road and Motorway Directorate (1,938 trees) as well as trees along class II and class III roads administered by the regional governments or their regional road bureaus (the remaining number of the aforementioned 9,000 trees).
A second falsehood of the above-mentioned claim is that the trees were slated to be cut because they pose a danger to drives. This is not the case - of the directorate's 1,938 trees, a total of 1,862 are slated to be cut down because of the tree's state of health (dead or sick), and a mere 76 because they endanger the flow of traffic in a manner that cannot be resolved through technical means. In this regard, it should be mentioned that the question as to whether a tree is sick or dead is decided not by road workers but by the relevant experts, and that any proposals for removing a tree because of its location are not based on arbitrary decisions on our part, but result from proposals made by the relevant administrative offices, towns, or the police.
In yesterday's report, ČTK also wrote that after being called upon to do so by nature preservationists, the directorate will refrain from the across-the-board cutting of tree alleys. This cannot be true, either, because the directorate never planned any across-the-board tree-cutting. What kind of across-the-board cutting are they referring to, when we are planning to cut 1,938 trees from among 6,000 kilometers of roadway under our jurisdiction - especially since the same ČTK report writes that, in Central Bohemia alone, there are some 355,000 trees along class II and III roads?
