A veteran of environmental stewardship has forcefully slammed Infrastructure Malta’s ‘compensating’ efforts to replace mature trees with young saplings.
Referring to Infrastructure Malta as “the greatest annihilator of biodiversity in the Maltese islands”, Alfred Baldacchino insisted such practice did not come close to replacing what is lost when old trees are cut down.
He served as assistant director of two different versions of the same environment protection unit within the former Malta Environment and Planning Authority for almost four decades before retiring in 2007.
“If, for example, they cut down a 300-year old tree and replace it with 300 saplings, they would still be far off from compensating for the tree that was chopped down,” Baldacchino argued.
“This example holds true whichever way you look at it, whether from the ecological, social, legal, aesthetic or financial perspective. Their reasoning is politically motivated and based on numbers instead of facts.”
IM planted over 11,800 indigenous trees in over 80 roadside strips and other urban and rural areas between summer 2019 and April this year. Nonetheless, Baldacchino remains clearly unimpressed with its efforts.
He had strong reservations about the mantra of “getting things done”, a direct reference to the slogan used by Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg.
“Infrastructure Malta ignores everything and everyone as long as they bulldoze biodiversity to their own whims and fancies. It is only a dictatorial show of strength,” he said.
Baldacchino insisted that “the claim demonstrates their insensitivity in a subject they do not understand or even want to know anything about”.
The former Mepa assistant director lamented the idea that the infrastructure agency seems to consider votes more important than the value of biodiversity and its necessity for the nation’s well-being.
“The agency knows that the damage being done not only infuriates all stakeholders but also lacks signs of good governance, to the extent that they now destroy trees under the cover of darkness or behind shielded enclosures,” Baldacchino said.