THE National Trust has been accused by an environmentalist of "health and safety paranoia" in felling 21 historic beech trees which form a Dorset landmark.

As reported last week the trust is removing 21 trees along the Beech Avenue at Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne, which it says have become dangerous due to disease, climate change and old age.

The scheme will see a further 78 specimens cut back to make them safe.

But Bournemouth-born Rodney Legg, who is chairman of the Open Spaces Society (but stressed his views were personal), said: "I think this is health and safety paranoia on the part of the National Trust.

"At the moment if you ask someone to pontificate on the safety of any particular tree they're bound to professionally err on the side of caution.

"I think there's more behind it, because the trust has been rather unlucky with tree falls in other places. We're now getting to the point virtually where people are looking at woods and saying killer trees'."

David Roberts, manager of the Kingston Lacy estate, said: "We have to adhere to health and safety and there are stories around the country where trees have fallen and killed people.

"We're not chopping down healthy trees, we're taking down trees that are diseased or dying. It saddens us terribly that we have to do this work; it costs us money and we don't want to do it," added Mr Roberts.

The trees were planted in 1835 by William John Bankes, who put 365 down one side and 366 along the other, representing the days in a normal year and a leap year. The species live for around 150 years.

The trust is establishing a project to record memories in an exhibition and Echo readers have already started the process online at bournemouthecho.co. uk.

Oral archiving sessions will be held at Kingston Lacy on Saturday and Sunday, October 4 and 5. The closing date for general entries is the end of January 2009. Entries should be sent to Beech Avenue Celebrations, Kingston Lacy, Wimborne Minister, Dorset BH21 4EA. More details at nationaltrust.org.uk/kingstonlacy.

  • Stop-go boards are operating along the stretch of the B3082 between 8.30am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.