The numbers, collected by the Fire Brigade and analyzed by Coldiretti, give the extent of the problem: during 2021, there were 54 thousand emergencies that required their intervention, in Italian cities, caused by unsafe trees.
The "perfect storm" was triggered by the increase in wind storms (+ 29%) on the one hand and the reduction in public green maintenance due to Covid on the other. Thus, the trees "at risk" increased by 5% compared to the average of the previous two years.
The provinces with the highest number of interventions: Varese, Monza Brianza and Milan, Gorizia and Trieste, Naples, Rome, La Spezia and Prato.
What is photographed in the report must serve as a reason for reflection and as a lever for change in the choices regarding planting and in investments in the correct care and pruning of plants in the city.
In fact, Coldiretti explains: "Plants fall due to the choice of the wrong essences for the climate, soil or position, but also due to errors in the dimensions and respect for distances for correct root development, which is particularly affected by the lack of adequate maintenance with pruning performed without the necessary professionalism. But climate change has also favored the proliferation of parasites often arrived from abroad which has catastrophic consequences on greenery, but also on safety, with problems of tree stability ".
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"A situation in which it is necessary to intervene with professional management, which provides for the recourse to the figure of the green maintenance man with suitable qualifications, also through the reassessment of the role of farmers as required by the guidance law that allows municipalities to delegate maintenance to agricultural entrepreneurs and thus avoid an improvised management that endangers citizens "affirms the president of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini in underlining that for this" it is necessary to involve the 27 thousand Italian horticultural companies at all levels that with 100 thousand employees already operate from north to south of the Peninsula for a turnover of 2.7 billion ".