Mallet in hand, Thomas Brail inspects the 200 trees on Avenue Bollée. To do this, the founder of the National Tree Monitoring Group (GNSA) goes around the bottom of the tree and goes up to the trunk to try to hear muffled sounds. “There, there is a fairly clear sound, there is no peeling of the bark so the tree is healthy,” he explains.
The one who went on a hunger strike at the top of a plane tree in Paris to demand the suspension of the construction of the A69, which should link Toulouse-Castres, does not stop there. Around ten people gathered on Wednesday June 26, 2024 alongside him to save the two hundred who will be cut off by the metropolis of Le Mans.
“It’s now the ecological transition, in 30 years, it will be too late!”
The trees on Avenue Bollée were planted in 1976. According to the city of Le Mans, they are dying and in ten years, it will have to cut them down. However, Thomas Brail’s analyzes say the opposite. “No branch dries. These trees can survive dog yearsit’s majestic! We must keep them!” He marvels. According to him, they can live for hundreds more years. But by 2025, in place of these trees, chronolines; in other words hydrogen buses. These will pass every ten minutes “We have nothing against bicycles, trams, hydrogen buses but. these mobilities do not make us breathe. Trees on the other hand make us breathe,” s’agace Thomas Brail.
The city of Le Mans assures that 208 trees will be replanted. But the concern of local residents is that these young plants will not replace the trees on Avenue Bollée which are over sixty years old.The growth rate of young trees is much slower than the acceleration of global warming. Then, the young trees, it will take them at least fifteen years to provide the same service as the big trees**,” says Michèle Miant, member of the 200 Arbres de Bollée collective.
“We cooked an egg on the asphalt”
In the middle of summer, if there is shade on the asphalt, the temperature is obviously cooler. Without its trees, Avenue Bollée will be between 18 and 20 degrees warmer. “For your information, two years ago in Toulouse, an egg was cooked on the asphalt.“, remembers Thomas Brail. Among them, local residents like Sandrine Perrier. At 52, she has lived and worked on Avenue Bollée for 27 years. Cutting down these trees is an aberration for her. “*By the time these young trees grow, they will cast the same shadow on us that those who are already there and we lose five degrees on the ground, it will be in 25 or 30 years. **By then I would be over 80.. I definitely won’t ride a bike anymore,*I might even be dead. It’s now the ecological transition, in 30 years it will be too late! » Worries Sandrine Perrier.
