A towering rubber tree dear to walkers along the Railway Trail in Warwick could be axed — but felling work by the Department of Parks has been called off for now after a rash of complaints.

“It’s an absolute shame how little regard we have for the environment — I was nearly in tears,” an area resident told The Royal Gazette, who encountered the job on Friday.

The trees, among Bermuda’s biggest, often become landmarks — from the giant at the foot of Khyber Pass, Warwick, to the elderly tree outside the Bermuda National Library on Queen Street.

This particular specimen, standing just west of Ord Road, was said to be earmarked for destruction after residents said its roots were coming through the walls of their water tanks.

“It was a beautiful tree that came right out over the trail; my grandchildren used to play at the base of it,” the resident said, adding that she had appealed to the workmen to halt the work.

“They said it had to come down, and they were going to get a bulldozer down there to dig out the roots. But I think the supervisor stopped the work, because they were getting complaints from a lot of people.”

The elderly resident said she had walked the Railway Trail for 50 years, covering several miles a day. Public Works teams have been kept busy in the wake of October’s two hurricanes, removing debris from the network of nature paths, but she said workmen were occasionally overzealous in the removal of trees and other vegetation.

The Royal Gazette found the tree still standing, but with much of its boughs chopped down.

“This is a nature trail and it doesn’t have to be treated like a park, so maybe they have had a rethink since last week,” the resident said. “I sure hope so.

“If the roots are going into somebody’s tank, they could just dig down the side and put in a concrete berm, rather than destroying this tree and digging up the trail.”

The India rubber tree, introduced to Bermuda in 1826, is one of the Island’s most popular trees but has a reputation for the aggressive spread of its root systems.