Leeds City Council and Metro admit that their preferred option for NGT would involve the loss of the avenue of trees between Rampart Road and Clarendon Road, as well as mature trees in Headingley and at Hyde Park Corner.

They say that it’s acceptable because every tree they cut down will be replaced by three others.

But they’d not be replacing like with like.

Mature trees are hosts to a range of wildlife, notably birds, insects and to a lesser degree fungi. The larger the tree the more carbon it sequesters, ie the more oxygen it generates.

Additionally, large trees substantially affect the character of an area.

Councils know all this and have lists of protected trees for many areas, detailing the specific individual trees that you cannot cut down without permission.

If you or I cut down the trees on the Moor and offered saplings in replacement would we get prosecuted rather than praised, and it should be no different for anyone else who does it.

Even if NGT did go for appropriate broadleaf trees, new saplings would take many decades to be any sort of replacement. The wildlife that uses the present trees will have been displaced and the residents of the area will have had more traffic for less oxygen.

Saplings are not a replacement for mature trees any more than apple pips are a replacement for an orchard.