Würzburg (epd). The city of Würzburg is defending itself against the allegation by the Bund Naturschutz (BN) that an above-average number of trees are being felled in the city area compared to other large cities in Bavaria. The BN held Würzburg up against particularly high felling numbers on Thursday: Although the city on the Main is only the eighth largest city in Bavaria (around 127,000 inhabitants), with 10,600 trees in the years 2011 to 2021 it made the third most fellings of all 17 cities surveyed. The city has now sharply criticized the BN for “lack of care” in evaluating the data.
“Overall, in our opinion, the comparability of the data is very manageable,” the city told the Evangelical Press Service (epd) on Friday. The BN surveyed the 15 largest cities in Bavaria and all cities with a district government seat – a total of 17 municipalities. Two cities did not respond to the BN request and are now doing comparatively well in terms of external impact. The BN also did not take into account the fact that in Würzburg trees with a trunk circumference of more than 60 centimeters were recorded, but elsewhere only from 80 centimeters.
A statement made by the BN about the 10,660 trees felled in the city from 2011 to 2021 is also completely wrong: “without private construction work.” The BN “obviously counted the privately felled trees”. From the figures supplied by the city to the conservationists, one could have recognized this false information, said a city spokesman. The resulting “bad headlines” thwarted “the conscientious work” done by the Würzburg Gardens Office and the Lower Nature Conservation Authority, it said.
According to BN, up to 300,000 trees were felled in the largest Bavarian cities between 2011 and 2021 and significantly fewer new ones were planted. Replanting could “in no way compensate” for the loss of old city trees anyway, because it takes decades for replanted trees to have a corresponding effect on the microclimate of a city. Trees are “natural air conditioners”, judged the BN. The conservationists themselves admitted when the figures were presented on Thursday: the data on the subject was “very diffuse”.
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