The airport is planned to be located in Istanbul’s northern part along the Black Sea on an area of 7,659 hectares. Some 6,172 hectares of this area is forest land. DHA photo

A total of 657,000 of trees will be cut down for Istanbul’s third airport construction, according to a report published on the Environment and Urban Planning Ministry’s official website.

The Environmental Impact Assessment’s (ÇED) report said the total number of trees in the area is 2,513,341 and 657,950 of them will need to be cut indispensably while 1,855,391 of the trees will be moved to new places.

However the exact number of the trees to be cut and moved will be revealed after the airport’s project is completed, the Ministry of Forestry told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.

The same report also said if the plans are implemented forest destruction is in danger of being irreversible.

The 6.7 billion-Turkish Lira airport project, which will be used by 150 million passengers per year, is planned to be completed by 2038 but will be partially operated after 2017 according to officials.

Source: here

Is a third airport really needed? Couldn´t they just expand the Sabiha Gokcen Airport? I guess not.... but even New York has only two airports. In any case, I hope they replant these trees somewhere else!

How long can we go on increasing airline traffic?

Until somone invents teleportation technology for us

"Beam us up, Scotty"