Paris: environmentalists call on Anne Hidalgo to "preserve all the trees"

Europe 1 with AFP 5:15 p.m., May 4, 2022

The elected Parisian environmentalists, turbulent allies of the mayor Anne Hidalgo, ask to "preserve all the existing trees" in the capital, after the renunciation Monday of the town hall to cut down twenty trees at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in front of the controversy aroused.

The “ambitious revegetation policy” demanded by elected EELV and related officials involves “not only massively planting trees in the ground, but also preserving all existing trees”, they write in a letter written on Wednesday.

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Ecology file

Shielding on social networks

The environmental group asks to meet with Emmanuel Grégoire and Christophe Najdovski, the deputies (PS) for urban planning and the greening of public space, to discuss redevelopment projects around the Eiffel Tower and the Porte de Montreuil, as well as all "the felling programs planned as part of the urban projects of the City of Paris".

Planned as part of the major "OnE" redevelopment project for the perspective between the Trocadéro and the Champ-de-Mars, the planned felling of around twenty trees, some of which are centenarians, has in a few days led to a lifting of social media shield.

The petition launched by the association France Nature Environnement (FNE) Paris and relayed by several personalities, including the journalist Hugo Clément, gathered more than 120,000 signatures, leading the town hall to give up the felling of century-old trees on Saturday, then on Monday to any felling on the site.

174 additional trees threatened

These demolitions were to allow the construction of luggage storage for visitors and premises for the employees of the Eiffel Tower.

A project that the Council of Paris had validated in February with the voices of environmentalists, in exchange for several concessions, including a moratorium on the disputed repair of the Champ-de-Mars.

"We are going to review the project accordingly," Anne Hidalgo's entourage told AFP on Wednesday, while FNE Paris, which is organizing a press conference on the site in the evening, stresses that the "permits are issued " and calls for his "abandonment".

A few days earlier, the association had denounced the felling of 76 trees in eastern Paris, Porte de Montreuil, the subject of another major redevelopment project for the town hall where, according to FNE Paris, 174 additional trees are threatened.

In recent months, environmentalists, present in the executive of Anne Hidalgo but who do not hesitate to ally with the right against her on urban planning issues, have obtained the overhaul of a project of large towers in front of the Seine (13th century), as well as a greener, less dense rewriting and without large towers of the future district of Bercy-Charenton (12th century).