Greens of Croatia Prevent Felling of Trees in Osijek Parks

Alert

19 May 2008

Zdravko Peko, President of Greens of Croatia (Zeleni Hrvatske), announces that the party will use its participation in the local government in Osijek to implement several important environmental projects, including the prevention of felling of trees in Osijek and preparation of a registry of trees in the city.

Peko says that every tree located in Osijek city limits will be registered in a special registry, with attacked photograph, description and category specified.

-Doctors warn about increasing numbers of people who come to seek treatment for allergies caused by poplar trees. I will propose to the City Council to replace the poplars with some local tree species, says Peko, talking about other new projects.

Peko proposed to the Council to create a bureau of environmental protection. However, admitting that there was little chance for it to be implemented any time soon, he then proposed to upgrade the current sub-department to a full department status, noting the importance of environmental protection for the process of EU integration.

Over the next several days, Peko will hold meetings with the experts that implemented similar project for tree registry in Zagreb, as well as another meeting in Čakovec � the two urban centres in the country that have implemented such projects.

- That is just the first stage of the project and it could be completed by the end of this year. Then, we intend to post all the data on the City of Osijek web-site, so that citizens could know if the trees in their streets are protected, how old were they, can they be brought down, explains Peko.