Citizen mobilization paid off.
The town hall of Paris undertakes not to cut down any tree at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in the face of the controversy aroused by a project to reorganize the district which threatened around twenty trees, some of them centuries old.
"There will be no tree felling, the commitment is made by Anne Hidalgo", assured on Twitter Christophe Najdovski, the assistant for green spaces and biodiversity.
Dear @hugoclement There will be no tree felling the commitment is made by @Anne_Hidalgo
The project will be reviewed so that each tree is preserved.
This project is also 1.7 hectares of cleared and vegetated spaces and the planting of more than 200 trees in addition to the existing ones.
https://t.co/EY2FrlVq1v
— Christophe Najdovski 🇺🇦 (@C_Najdovski) May 2, 2022
"The project will be reviewed so that each tree is preserved," he said, trying to extinguish the controversy born in recent days because of the "OnE" project.
He planned to revegetate and "pedestrianize" the surroundings of the Trocadéro and the Eiffel Tower, while removing certain trees to build, in particular, luggage storage for visitors and premises for employees.
Read alsoEiffel Tower site renovation project: 5 points to review
More than 96,000 signatures
These future developments have aroused the opposition of several associations and personalities.
A petition launched on the change.org site, and relayed by the radio and television host Nagui, the journalist Hugo Clément or the ex-boss of Medef
(the employers' union)
Laurence Parisot, brought together more than 96,000 signatures since Saturday.
Faced with this start of the fire, the town hall had already tried to calm things down through the voice of the first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire, who assured on Saturday that "no century-old tree will be cut down".
No trees will be felled.
With @Anne_Hidalgo, we are reorienting the project in this direction.
This is the philosophy that we carry: adapting town planning to the existing plant heritage.
https://t.co/kV50lG2J2K
— Emmanuel Grégoire (@egregoire) May 2, 2022
On Monday evening on Twitter, socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo shared Christophe Najdovski's message, promising to abandon any plan to fell trees, without distinguishing between century-old trees and others.
The elected ecologists of Paris demand "that the location of the luggage storage and the premises be re-examined" for the employees, so that they do not "require the felling of trees", they write in a press release.
According to the town hall, the redevelopment of the Eiffel Tower district should make it possible to plant more than 200 new trees and create 1.6 ha of green space.
Anne Hidalgo has made the greening of the capital a major objective of her second term, with promises to plant 170,000 additional trees or create five "urban forests" and four new parks.