Leave them alone, treehuggers tell school

Leave them alone, treehuggers tell school
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2013/03/30/374575/Leave-them.htm

By Lauly Li, The China Post

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- After hugging an old tree on a New Taipei campus for over 35 hours, Green Party member Wang Chung-ming (王鐘銘) yesterday traded turns with two other volunteers in a bid to keep the tree from being pruned by the school.

There are 27 trees on the campus that the school intends to trim before transplanting them to another district, Jiangcui Junior High School (江翠國中) principle Kuo Yueh-hsiu (郭月秀) said yesterday.

Kuo said that the school filed an application with the New Taipei City Government before commencing the pruning.

A city government official, Chen Yuan-chuan (陳淵泉), confirmed that the school had sent a proposal for New Taipei to review; however, the school did not report when it began to trim the trees.

Former Jiangcui Junior High School employee Cheng Tsai-luan (鄭彩鑾) and other former colleagues recently created the Rescue Jiangcui Old Trees group specifically to protect the trees on the campus.

Cheng said that some of the trees have suffered from overtrimming, which has left them ugly without tree branches or leaves. She said the way the school treated the trees was brutal and a negative demonstration to students.

Cheng and other members wore headbands and raised banners on Wednesday in front of the school, urging it to stop trimming the trees.

Police raised banners and warned Cheng and other group members that their gathering was against assembly laws.

In a last-ditch attempt to save the trees from overpruning, volunteer Pan Han-chiang (潘翰疆) and Green Party member Wang wore raincoats, opened umbrellas and stayed on one of the tree throughout Thursday night, despite the chilly breeze and thunderstorms. Police and firefighters inflated a large air cushion beneath the tree where Pan and Wang were staying and tried to persuade them to come down.

The authorities left before midnight.

On a visit to the school on Wednesday, Department of Agriculture (DOA) officials discovered that some of the trees had been excessively pruned, according to Chen.

The DOA officials asked the workers to halt operations at once, cover the trees and apply treatments on the trunks. Chen said.