While the EU is currently under apparent threat from terrorism and Americais still suffering from economy woes, here in Hong Kongwe are facing a new kind of threat…from big green serial-killing trees. Well, OK, not exactly serial killing but definitely serial-injuring because there have been an uncanny amount of injuries caused by trees over the last few years. In fact, according to a survey released last Friday one in 10 Hong Kong trees is in danger of collapsing – and you’re more likely to be targeted by evil vegetation if you’re a tree-hugging hippy living in an wooded area (or a distracted iPhone addict watching porn whilst walking in the forest).

Based on the findings of the survey the Chinese University of Hong Kong are now calling on authorities to establish a tree-health database – you know, a catalogued database like IMDB, but to determine the floppiness of trees instead of films. But, while we don’t yet have something as advanced or supposedly necessary as a tree-health database set up, a team of 200 volunteers was nevertheless established last month. However, we still won’t be able to sleep safely at night, because these volunteers all happen to be Members of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong. What, didn’t you know democrats are the best tree experts around? Nope, nether did we.

The reason for all this tree hullabaloo? Well, it all stems from the Hong Kong Government’s fetish for concrete and development (and their ignorance of the natural world). Back in 2005 the incidents started with the luckiest tree in Hong Kong (the Lam Tsuen Wishing Tree, which is so popular that it has its own expressway exit and is shown on highway signs), which had an entire limb fall off, breaking the leg of a 62-year-old man and scratching the head of a 4-year-old boy. The other big indecent that reignited the paranoia in 2008 was the collapse of a 23-meter tree in Stanley, which killed a super-unfortunate 19-year-old (and caused the loss of thousands of dollars for businesses in the area, an insensible bastard of a shopowner said at the time). More recently, back in June of this year a falling tree hit a taxi driver and a pedestrian in central, and 2 weeks before that another evil tree took the life of a 49 year-old cyclist, who swerved to avoid a falling branch and ended up dieing in hospital where he died from brain injuries.

At the end of the day all this tree anarchy has only resulted in a more paranoid public and a government who now has another excuse to pave over more long-standing parts of Hong Kong and a better reason to remove dangerous municipal ‘hazards’ like greenery and heritage. What’s more is that a similar thing has already happened before, when the ‘more regulation is better regulation’ mentality led the Hong Kong Government to bury all our hillsides under concrete after a few mudslides resulted in fatalities back in the 90’s. So be on the lookout for more concrete and fake plastic trees – coming to a leafy area near you soon.