The Historical Heritage area of the Cabildo has granted this Wednesday authorization to the Arrecife City Council for the elimination of a ficus australis located in the José Ramírez Cerdá park, "after verifying the worsening of the conditions of the aforementioned specimen." This was announced by Councilor Ariagona González, who has accused the Consistory of creating "artificial conflicts."
González responded in this way to the statement sent the previous day by the City Council, in which it maintained that it had already submitted this request up to three times, and accused the Cabildo of "irresponsible."
In this regard, the councilor has stressed that the Arrecife City Council submitted an initial request in October 2021, but at that time the risk value was 1/6750, according to the "Quantitative assessment of risks associated with trees" system, which is the one used for these measurements. "The aforementioned value is located in an intermediate section of the scale and is considered tolerable in the event that the affected tree has an exceptional value and precisely Heritage considered the existence of that exceptional value, since the protection regulations of the Arrecife Marina, which includes the José Ramírez Cerdá park, establish that 'the garden areas may not be reduced or their composition altered with regard to existing species,'" they emphasize from the Cabildo.
For this reason, they explain that the technicians of the Heritage service negatively reported Arrecife's request on December 10, 2021. "However, upon the entry of a new letter, dated last July 15, and in view of the fact that the risk of falling had evolved negatively to 1/3500, which must be considered unacceptable, the service has carried out a new report, authorizing the intervention," adds the Island Corporation.
“As soon as the Arrecife City Council informed us of the negative evolution of the risk of falling, we acted with the greatest speed, responding to the request almost immediately,” said the councilor, who regretted the “special commitment of the political leadership of Arrecife to generate artificial conflicts.”
“Until now, the information provided by the City Council justified the conservation of the ficus australis, since the risk of falling, measured in accordance with the standardized system, was tolerable; so it was necessary to study other alternatives,” concluded Ariagona González.
