SIR

It is of no matter that the trees were felled and taken away from the spinney behind Overmonnow Services, or whether or not the ground is to be used to build an hotel on next week, five years or ten years time. The shame is that the land should be built on as it served as a noise and air pollutant filter for the dual carriageway.

There should be no need to build the town right up to the trunk roads. Leave a space between motorways and houses. The value is in the bushes and trees: the overall habitat of the patch.

Leave it alone. Plant a few trees if you feel like it, although, left to itself, the ground will reseed and set up again. It did so before.

"You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone... take down the trees and put them in a tree museum." (Joni Mitchell)

Hugh Robert

(Buckholt)