One of the nicest things that make life in the new Prinz-Eugen-Park district is the old trees on the site. As the city emphasizes again and again, the main idea behind the planning for the quarter and the construction measures is “the greatest possible preservation and further development” of the existing trees, the meadow landscape, but also the biotope structure. For the implementation of the landscape concept in the so-called Green Center between Jörg-Hube-Straße and Ruth-Drexel-Straße and in the area of the future climbing playground, trees still have to be felled at the beginning of the new year.
The “Initiative to save old trees in the Green Center” is very concerned about this. 204 residents have now expressed their displeasure in a petition addressed to City Planning Councilor Elisabeth Merk. “Unfortunately,” the letter says, “we had to state with great incomprehension in the last few weeks that (…) extensive stocks of old trees are to be sacrificed for the new straight route in the Green Center.” The residents ask Merk to “put a stop to the deforestation” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/. “We want to see what we can still prevent, what is still possible,” says Simone Paffrath, a spokeswoman for Initiative.
There are 2225 trees on the future public green spaces in Prinz-Eugen-Park, which cover twelve hectares. 83 trees, the city informs, with a trunk circumference of 80 centimeters and “further wood” must be removed. This figure is also confirmed by Mara Roth from the Cooperative for Neighborhood Organization (GeQo), who, together with the Neighborhood Working Group on Ecology and the Bogenhausen District Committee, was involved in the planning of the city from the start and always actively addresses the concerns and wishes of residents. She very much regrets that the petition has now caused “unrest”, especially since the GeQo horticultural department and a representative of the Ecology Working Group only presented the final plans with new figures and data on December 15th. The residents, some of whom are members of the Ecology Working Group, knew about this, so they could have waited for this information.
In general, according to Roth, she could not understand the accusation in the petition that the planning process was “never communicated transparently” with the residents. In a newsletter to the residents, she explains that the municipal building department has provided “far more information than usual”. “Several information events” had also taken place, most recently in January 2020. There were on-site meetings with the GeQo and the Ecology Working Group.
Petra Cockrell, Greens parliamentary group spokeswoman in the Bogenhausen district committee and chairwoman of the subcommittee on the environment, remembers one visit well. “We spent four hours walking up and down the grounds, looking at every tree and weighing which tree was more worth protecting than the other,” says Cockrell. A lot of effort was made and every tree was fought for. In fact, says Mara Roth, trees could be saved in this way. Because actually 151 trees should be felled. Now there are 83.
“We did not want to stir up a conflict under any circumstances, nor did we want to criticize the GeQo. That was not our goal,” says initiative spokeswoman Paffrath. “But these compromises do not go far enough for us.” The residents’ petition is therefore also about routing the Green Center and in the neighborhood. Trees would be sacrificed because of “straight and topographically level paths”. Petra Cockrell doesn’t see it that way. There, too, they fought for every tree. In addition, curved paths didn’t make things any easier. In any case, because of the narrow roots, four meters from the tree to the path must be observed. She points out that one would have slipped straight back to the next tree if the path had been curved.
In addition, the route is not solely responsible for the felling at the Green Center. “The 83 approved felling is, as Mara Roth writes in the newsletter to the residents,” to a large extent, punctures to Stradellastraße and the park area adjoining Prinz-Eugen-Park to the south. “Another reason is there, where the so-called beaver castle is being built, the topography. According to Petra Cockrell, one meter of soil has to be removed from the playground so that the climbing frame is not too high. This is done primarily for privacy and noise protection reasons, but also because of the accessibility.
Mara Roth is firmly convinced that she has got the best out of the quarter in very “well-founded and transparent discussions with the city”. And she adds that 390 trees will be replanted, 15 also in the playground.
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