DESTRUCTION to an area of woodland in Trinity is “unacceptable” and is damaging local wildlife, the head of charity Trees for Life has said.
The police have launched an appeal to help identify the perpetrators of the damage in Egypt Woods.
And Alex Morel, chief executive of Trees for Life, has said that the harm to the local wildlife has been a problem for a few years but has “gotten to a stage where the environmental damage is impossible to not notice”.
She said that items such as sandbags and diggers had been brought into the area while tree branches and roots had appeared to be broken off to create jumps for mountain bikes.
“There shouldn’t be a small minority of cyclists damaging it for everyone else,” Mrs Morel said.
She added that the damage has inadvertently changed the water course in the area, as well as making it for difficult for walkers to experience the woods and causing harm to native species.
The charity have found constantly repairing the area “exhausting”. Mrs Morel said: “What is the point of planting trees if we are not protecting the trees we already have?”
Funding is in place to replace the damaged trees from The Greening Jersey Trust, an organisation of local finance companies committed to protecting the local environment.
They have also provided “hundreds” of hours of volunteering to repair the space.
Trees for Life will be hosting a public meeting at Trinity Parish Hall on 9 October to present a woodland management plan for the next ten years put together by former principal ecologist for the Government of Jersey, John Pinel.
