Plant more trees! Town councillor challenges council to create ‘ambitious’ tree planting scheme

TOWN councillor, Simon Crundell, has challenged the council to plant more trees and do more to fight the climate emergency. 

 The town council has recently agreed to take part in the ‘Queen’s Green Canopy’ – a tree planting scheme in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee next year. The scheme will invite people from across the United Kingdom to ‘Plant a Tree for the Jubilee’ from October this year, when the tree planting season begins, through to the end of the Jubilee year in 2022. 

But whilst cllr Crundell has welcomed the town council’s participation in the scheme, he told councillors at a recent meeting of the community development committee that the Jubilee plans are “not enough” to tackle climate change and the ecology crisis, and that the council should be more “ambitious”. He has suggested looking for other tree planting schemes and funding that could “enlarge” the project – such as the government’s Urban Tree Challenge Fund, which aims to plant 44,000 large ‘standard’ trees over a two-year period. 

“It makes us look good, but doesn’t really solve the problem,” said cllr Crundell at the meeting. “We should be looking to make Melksham add to the biodiversity of the area, and that requires an awful lot more than a couple of trees in a garden.” 

The councillor has suggested that the council could create a town asset for the community to use “for many hundreds of years to come”. 

About his proposal, cllr Crundell told Melksham News, “A driving passion of mine is climate change and the ecology crisis. This is a subject which I think a lot of people are following with increasing interest and concern.  

“When you consider that some studies have shown that there has been up to an 80% decline in the biomass of insects in the last 25-30 years, this presents an immediately pressing issue.  

“Wiltshire is an agricultural county, and our market towns should contribute to the biodiversity of our landscape, not detract from it.  

“There are lots of initiatives that we can pursue as a town council – not necessarily prohibitively expensive or intrusive – that would make Melksham a town that is not only a beautiful, vibrant home for people, but for the natural world too.” 

At the meeting, councillors agreed to identify areas to plant trees in order to participate in the Queen’s Jubilee planting scheme. In addition, they agreed to explore options to expand the project, and make it more “ambitious”.