SCHEMES to replant and and replace trees will be considered as part of the government’s tree strategy, the Environment Minister has said.

Deputy John Young said there was ‘a lot of work in progress on trees’ but it would take time to complete.

An online petition has called for a law that for every tree felled in the Island, two more would be replanted.

It stated: ‘Every year in Jersey, trees are cut down for firewood or simply for building sites. Trees in Jersey are being lost at the alarming rate of several thousand per year, with numbers rising over the past decade.

‘To stop this, make a law saying that for every tree felled, another should be planted.’ And charity Jersey Trees for Life has said current laws protecting trees are not ‘suitable or substantial enough’.

The petition from Mathieu Therese referred to a Jersey Biodiversity Centre report, which highlighted that none of the 30 applications to fell protected trees since 2008 had been refused, resulting in 100 protected trees being chopped down.

Deputy Young said: ‘A type of replanting arrangement will be considered as part of the preparation of the Tree Strategy.’ This will include ‘wide stakeholder engagement’, he said, as part of the government’s species and habitat protection project.

The minister said there were ‘implications to consider’ before replanting could be recommended as suggested in the petition, ‘but the principle of replanting in some form to offset tree removal is likely to be included’.

Deputy Young said: ‘The work is likely to take some time to complete as it is dependent on progress with legislation changes in the drafting pipeline and the [tree] strategy.’ Donna-Marie Rault, from Jersey Trees for Life, said the petition was a ‘good example of how more and more of Jersey’s community are becoming aware of the amount of trees we are losing each year’.

Genuine cases where a tree had to be removed, including when safety issues arise, appeared to be ‘few and far between’, with many removals based on proximity to housing or a development site.

Although the petition was a good starting point, she said ‘unfortunately the loss of these trees cannot be simply defined by how many should be planted as a replacement’.

She added: ‘Any tree removed will have many different factors – such as age, species or location – that need to be taken into account to actually determine how beneficial that individual tree was to the surrounding area. It wouldn’t be as simple as defining every tree removal in the same manner.

‘There is a much greater issue that needs to be addressed in Jersey and that is how trees can be chopped down so easily in the first place. The laws surrounding tree protection are not suitable or substantial enough and this is an important factor that needs to be rectified to ensure we maintain the diversity of habitat we need in the Island.’