In the early morning of June 27, a monumental stone pine over 86 years old that was on municipal public domain, next to the Palace of Independence, in Lisbon, was felled. The tree, which offered shade and oxygen to passersby and served as a wildlife refuge, was located in one of the city's largest heat islands and in the parish with the fewest trees per square meter. The President of the Historical Society of the Independence of Portugal, José Ribeiro e Castro, invoked "a train of storms" to justify the felling.
Ribeiro e Castro publicly stated he had a technical report endorsed by the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA). However, agronomist engineer Filomena Caetano, who directed the Veríssimo de Almeida Plant Pathology Laboratory at ISA for decades, publicly clarified that the document was merely a report requested privately and prepared by two already retired professors, without specialization in urban arboriculture, not representing any institutional endorsement from ISA. The report was never made public, as the law requires.
The Law No. 59/2021, which establishes the Legal Regime for Urban Tree Cover Management, requires that the felling of trees on municipal public domain can only occur when there is potential danger proven through biomechanical and/or phytosanitary analysis prepared by technicians with specific training in urban arboriculture and certified. The article questions whether the invoked document meets these legal requirements or whether it is merely an insufficient private opinion to justify the felling decision. Municipal Order No. 60/P/2012 also requires public information procedures with at least 15 days' notice, which apparently was also not complied with.
The authors of the article, representing the Platform for the Defense of Trees and Forum Citizenship LX, consider that we are facing "a train of illegalities" and that the true tragedy is the destruction of a public asset by those responsible for institutions that should defend the heritage. Citizens continue to wait for the Lisbon City Council to enforce the Municipal Order and the Municipal Tree Regulation, and for the Public Prosecutor to enforce Law No.
