The Trees
Bristol Zoological Society’s own website (until the page was deleted) described its gardens as, “an award-winning botanical garden…..containing an important collection of plants and a host of unusual trees and shrubs from around the world…..one of the UK’s most important collections of plants” and “170 years of nurture and gardening artistry.”
Paul Wood, the author of London's Street Trees: A Field Guide to the Urban Forest, who visited the site a few years ago said, “The trees at Bristol Zoo Gardens are some of the finest to be found in Bristol and are an exceptional collection that is nationally, and indeed internationally, important. There are dozens of individual trees in the Gardens that are noteworthy for their rarity, or as fine examples of their species. Several national 'Champion' trees have been recorded, and the collection as a whole is of immense value to the city for cultural, historic, and environmental reasons”.
Despite all of this, Bristol Zoological Society Trustees want to chop down 150 beautiful mature trees and bulldoze the iconic herbaceous border where generations of Shareholders have scattered the ashes of their loved ones, in order to clear the way for their multi-million pound luxury homes and six-storey blocks of flats.
Mark Ashdown, the chair of Bristol Tree Forum said in 2023 before the planning meeting where planning permission was awarded, “The 376 trees on the site have enormous habitat and environmental value, and yet the Trustees propose to remove 162 of them. The resulting loss of biodiversity will be profound; either minus 22 per cent or minus 12 per cent depending on what model is used that will result from the removal of nearly half the trees on the site – in our experience, the proposal to transplant mature trees is unrealistic and unlikely to be successful. According to Bristol Zoological Society’ own calculation, these 162 trees represent 48 per cent of the site’s biodiversity value. How can this be permitted in a city that has declared an ecological emergency?" (BTF have since recalculated the number of trees to be felled as 150 as opposed to 162).
Save Bristol Gardens Alliance have said:
“Bristol planners allowed BZS to use old unworkable methodology in its application and to show a biodiversity net gain as a result. Using the correct workings experts calculate the development would actually cause a 20% NET LOSS in biodiversity. The planners inconsistently used an old version of carbon factors to demonstrate a reduction in carbon emissions from the development.”
Bristol Zoological Society says it is going to plant 470 trees to replace the trees it is chopping down but firstly, it is unclear if there is enough space to plant 470 new trees inside the 12-acre site. Secondly, replacing mature and established trees with new trees is not like for like. It is, as Professor Mary Hagen of Swansea University describes, like “me offering you two 1p coins in exchange for a £1 coin and telling you that you end up with more money. We need to stop falling for it”.
Charles Harvey, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies carbon storage in forests says you get more bang for your buck by focusing on preserving existing trees, rather than prioritising new growth to offset emissions:
“Planting trees where they've been lost is often a good idea…..but a much more efficient thing to do, to have a larger effect for the same effort, is to stop cutting down trees. It's almost silly to think about planting a huge number of new trees while we're just burning and destroying them everywhere, releasing carbon at rates that are much higher than what new growth would take up.”
Bristol Zoological Society’s plans to destroy its own historic gardens would be breathtaking, even if it wasn't also a conservation charity and it is astonishing that trustees ever signed up to this plan. However, at the eleventh hour, the trustees do still have it within their power to stop the destruction of the world's 5th oldest zoo and an astonishingly beautiful botanical garden, which the people of Bristol cherished for two centuries.
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