Letter: Trees and traffic

From Mr Martin Hughes-Jones

Sir: The Newbury by-pass is the latest excuse for the Highways Agency to trot out its tree planting statistics for new roads. The agency says that 10 trees will be planted for every one chopped down, but we submitted evidence to last summer's A30/A303 public enquiry at Yarcombe which showed that if enough trees were to be planted along the proposed route to take account of the greenhouse gases emitted by the increased traffic flows, 7,000 hectares of forest would need to be planted and not the intended 85 hectares - an area some 80 times larger than the planned planting.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Hughes-Jones

South West Green Party

Tiverton, Devon