Candidates Join Woodland Trust In Promoting Trees And The Health Benefits They Bring. By Adam Colclough
Green Party candidates standing in Newcastle-under-Lyme at the local elections have pledged to promote protecting and planting trees in the borough if elected.
The pledge is made in response to a call by the Woodland Trust for candidates at local and mayoral elections across the country to make a ‘commitment to woods and trees in their constituency’.
Jessie Mellor, Green Party candidate for Bradwell said: “we are in unprecedented times where nature is under threat like never before”, adding that people “need to come together to protect our green spaces and a as a councillor I would actively encourage that process”.
Climate change making the weather more extreme putting the UK’s trees under threat. Storm Arwen, which hit the county in November last year damaged 7000 hectares of woodland, equivalent to 10,000 football pitches.
The Woodland Trust are calling on candidates to pledge to protect irreplaceable habitats, including ancient woodlands, defend the existing tree stock from invasive pests and diseases, and to promote the planting of more trees and the health benefits this brings.
In a statement on their website, they write: ‘Leafy green, tree filled neighbourhoods are healthier and more enjoyable places to live. Accessible woodlands, high canopy cover and thriving mature street trees bring enormous value for local people in many ways’.
Trees bring significant benefits to urban areas, based on the 2017 UK Natural Capital data produced by the Office for National Statistics these include, reducing air pollution, noise mitigation and providing space for leisure activities.
Access to green spaces, including woodland, is beneficial for our physical and mental health. It helps with stress reduction and gives people a free space in which to be active.
In 2020 only 16.2% of people in the UK had access to woodland within a reasonable distance from their home, down from 21.1% in 2016, in addition 13% of people do not have access to a back garden. This makes protecting and expanding woodland even more important.
Green Party activists in Newcastle-under-Lyme have been campaigning to protect and promote woodland in the borough, including Bradwell Hospital and the former Keele Golf Course.
Candidate for Bradwell Jessie Mellor has led the campaign to protect 400 trees there from being felled to make way for 85 executive homes, a spokesperson for North Staffs Green Party said she had “been at the forefront of sending the message to the borough council that people in Newcastle value their woods and other green spaces”.
Adding that the council has “shown a worrying disregard for evidence and public feeling in putting forward a draft local plan that threatens both”, local Greens are committed to “working at the election and afterwards to protect and enhance” green spaces in the borough.
Jessie Mellor said she was tired of “the voice of residents not being heard in the council chamber” and their concerns being “swept under the carpet” as a result.
She urged people who wanted to protect green spaces in Newcastle and beyond to join the Save Newcastle’s Green Sites campaign, more details can be found on their Facebook page.