Local Agriculturists Joslyn Richardson said he provided advice to Minister of VROMI Maurice Lake with respect to the Tamarind Tree at the Causeway Roundabout in Cole Bay near the border.
Besides professional advice being provided from a number of entities, national police force section traffic division, the Ministry of VROMI, the Nature Foundation, and Archeologist Jay Haviser, professional advice was also provided by local Agriculturalist Joslyn Richardson who has been involved over the years in historic tree conservation.
On Monday Agriculturist Joslyn Richardson stated that two months ago at the request of Minister Maurice Lake he was asked to see how the Tamarind Tree could have been saved.
Richardson said he went to the site and checked out the situation and came to the conclusion that a successful transplant of the tree would be less than 50 per cent successful.
"The big hype around the tamarind tree is wrongly conceived. You can’t extract the tree without killing it. Removing the tree would have killed it. First you would have had to dig a trench six feet away from the tree trunk and right around it. A crane would have had to be used to take out the tree after you have severed the roots.
"A trench was impossible to do due to the current road. If the tree was out in a field, you would not have had any problem with creating a 360 degree trench around it. Another factor is the age of the tree, more than 150 years of age. In Holland they extracted an old tree but it died later.
"This was something impossible. People have to realize you have to look at the process involved in an adequate manner where it concerns extracting such an old tree and not become emotional about it. The main roots would have had to be secured. I advised Minister Lake that saving the tree was an impossible feat," Agriculturist Joslyn Richardson said on Monday.