Millions of trees are at risk in a secretive nationwide felling operation launched by Network Rail to end the nuisance of leaves and branches falling on the line.



Thousands of poplars, sycamores, limes, ash trees and horse chestnuts have already been chopped down across the country from Yorkshire to Dorset, and the scale of the potential destruction outlined in a Network Rail blueprint involves 10m trees growing within 60 metres of track.



[Network Rail, the public body that owns and manages much of Britain’s railway infrastructure, disputes that millions of trees are at risk, and that its felling operation is secretive or represents a change in practice. After publication of this article, the organisation’s head of media, Kevin Groves, said in an email: “We are not a logging company or a paper making company – we have no need or desire to remove all the trees from the railway. Our job is to run trains, and run them reliably and safely and to do so we have to manage our lineside vegetation carefully and responsibly and that’s exactly what we do.

[”We take advice from experts”, he went on, “to ensure our policies and standards are well balanced”. This enabled Network Rail “to both maintain and look after the trees on our estate, as well as remove dangerous ones and those minority of species that can cause reliability and safety problems in the autumn. Biodiversity matters to us.” See footnote.]

The company has created an aerial map of its 40,000 hectares of railway and identified “hotspots” where mature trees might cause a problem at an unspecified time in the future. Engineers are operating in a targeted felling programme that dwarfs the operation by Sheffield city council that was paused in the face of huge public protest and condemnation from the environment secretary, Michael Gove.

Over the last fortnight, people around the country have woken to the sound of chainsaws and expressed concern at the lack of consultation and the scale of the destruction.



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In one incident, police in Bournemouth were called by residents to complain that engineers were operating illegally as the felling is taking place during the nesting season.

At one west London station this week, an engineer felling five mature trees said they were carrying out a “pre-emptive strike” in case branches or leaves fell on the line in future.

Ray Walton witnessed hundreds of trees being chopped down along the length of track between Christchurch and Bournemouth. “It was total mass destruction, they obliterated every tree,” he said. “These trees were mature 30-foot-high trees which have been there for 50 years in some cases and never caused a problem.

“This went far beyond reasonable management of the trees. They took them all out, and destroyed the habitat for wildlife.”

Network Rail boasts of the green corridor along its tracks as a haven for wildlife, but in London, Dorset, the Midlands and Yorkshire thousands of trees and the vegetation beneath them are being cleared, leaving habitats devastated.

[Kevin Groves disputed that there had been a change: “Our lineside management policy and standards have not changed. We are not managing the lineside any differently today than we did last week, last month or last year. The tree census has enable us to be more targeted, eliminating needless clearance work enabling us to be more efficient and better at managing the lineside.”]



[Neither was there secrecy, he said: Information was “freely available on our website” and before any cutting is done beside the rail lines “we letter-drop every single lineside neighbour living within 100m of the track”.

James Graham, from Manchester, said he saw thousands of trees being felled last week along a 10-mile section of the trans-Pennine route from Manchester to Leeds.

“I know they have to manage the trees, but this was excessive,” he said. “It looked like some kind of logging operation. I was sitting in the train and looking out at the countryside and all you could see was mile after mile of tree stumps and sawdust. They had felled trees which were a long way from the track. It was extreme.”

In Sutton Coldfield, teams working for Network Rail have been felling hundreds of trackside trees. Elsewhere in the country, tree surgeons working for the rail firm are engaged in mass felling.

Network Rail admits the vast majority of the trees are healthy. It defended the felling, saying its new tree database of hotspot problem trees has “revolutionised” its approach to “vegetation management” to cut delays and risks to passengers from tree branches.

The company said the average tree had between 10 and 50,000 leaves, any or all of which could fall on the line.

The timing has caused increased outrage because it is taking place during nesting season – between March and August – despite promises by Network Rail that no felling would take place when birds are nesting.

Caroline Lucas, the co-leader of the Green party, said the scale of the operation was shocking and an act of environmental vandalism.

“While some tree work is required on safety grounds,” she said, “Network Rail’s approach tends to be one of slash and burn. To be taking action in the nesting season is even more reckless.”

[Kevin Groves said later that assurances about nesting season do not hold true “if trees constitute a risk – such as at Twickenham in west London where drivers couldn’t see signals”.]

An RSPB spokesperson said: “The worry is that much of this work is ... non-urgent work that is simply being carried out with little regard to the presence of birds and other animals.

“If such ... work is being done without reference to the Wildlife and Countryside Act, which offers basic protection to nesting birds, it may well be in breach of the law.”

Network Rail did not answer the Guardian’s request to see a copy of the tree “hotspots” map, and did not respond to questions about the consultation process, air-quality considerations and how many trees have so far been planted to replace those felled. A spokesman, Jack Harvey, said that cutting near Twickenham was for safety and had met “all environmental requirements”. Other Guardian requests for nationwide figures from the tree database – on hectares felled, trees identified as needing felling, and how many trees had been cut down so far this year – could not be answered in time for publication and would likely require a freedom of information request, he said.

Paul de Zylva, nature campaigner for Friends of the Earth, criticised the insensitive clearance of habitats.

“Rail corridors are sanctuaries for wildlife and trees can be important screening for communities,” he said. “Network Rail should be improving how it manages its land for wildlife as trees and plants are likely to be habitats for a variety of British wildlife, including nesting birds.”

Dan Donovan, a senior spokesman for Network Rail, said: “Network Rail is a big, responsible, public company that takes its environmental obligations seriously. We manage our lineside to provide healthy biodiversity advised by experts in the field. We do remove trees that are, or could be dangerous, or impact on the reliability of services that serve over 4.5m people everyday.

“We make our policies in this area public, in an open and transparent

way and work with environmental organisations to help us get it right when we do have to take action.”

On its website, it said the tree felling was part of its Orbis (Offering Rail Better Information Service) programme and was saving the taxpayer thousands of pounds in repair and clean-up costs and reducing the likelihood of a train colliding with a fallen tree or branch.

• This article was amended on 16 May to include remarks by Kevin Groves of Network Rail disputing that millions of trees are at risk, and that the felling operation is secretive or represents a change in practice. For clarity, a subsequent NR quote about biodiversity was attributed to its originator, Dan Donovan. A paragraph stating that Network Rail did not respond to a request for comment, and refused to reveal how many of the 10m trees identified along its lines have been earmarked for felling, has been corrected to make clear what the company did, and did not, say in response to questions.

• This article was amended on 1 and 3 May 2018. It was made clear that Sheffield city council’s tree-felling programme was paused rather than permanently halted. A reference to Network Rail doing its aerial mapping by drone has been deleted.