70% of Canberra's trees to be lopped down?

Punter said :

I originally come from Brisbane and I must say the leaves that change colour and drop are one of the most beautiful things I admire and love about this town. It would be a shame if such trees were included in this plan.

I’d hate to see the wonderful autumnal view looking down from Red Hill over the inner south be lost 🙁

Please recognise Bisbane as the capital city of Queensland and realise I should have spelled Brisbane.

I originally come from Bisbane and I must say the leaves that change colour and drop are one of the most beautiful things I admire and love about this town. It would be a shame if such trees were included in this plan. On the other hand, I think our native gum trees are one of the most dangerous trees existing in our suburbs and need to be removed. They have no place in our community as they drop heavy branches without warning particularly in times of extended drought. I know people who have been hospitalised by falling branches. I hope they are the first to go.

Wow, tree’s have a use by date. Old ones will have to be removed and replaced. Who’d have thunk it!

I didn’t know it was 70% either 🙁
It makes me wonder about the long-term implications for various mass plantings around the city, including the arboretum.
It also makes me wonder about the implications for people who bought blocks with protected trees on them. I know in one area the trees were inspected and only the ones judged healthy at the time were kept, but compression of the ground by trucks during building work wouldn’t do them much good and what happens in the longer term if the owner doesn’t see the point in spending money on a regular arborist inspection?
I also wonder if they have made wise choices in some of their plantings. Years ago we received a letter advising that our street trees were about to be planted and the chosen species was a certain eucalypt. Just out of tree-lover’s curiosity and confident that they would have chosen a variety suitable for urban use, I looked it up. Huge and prone to dropping branches. Nice choice!

“Street trees, green spaces and backyards are all important factors in making our city a good place to live. They provide a nice microclimate, are a habitat for birds and possums, and look good.” says Caroline Le Couteur in that press release.

At last the Greens are going to advocate for enough water infrastructure and when we have enough water lowering the price and relaxing the permanent restrictions so we can have some green spaces and a nice microclimate.

And trees. As long as they don’t shade those next to useless solar panels.

The trees are being cut down over the next 25 years, according to the article. Not all at once.

(This is so that the new generation of trees won’t all have been planted at the same time, so they won’t have this problem again in 60 years).

In Beechworth and other old Victorian goldrush towns they have tree lined streets with trees that are way older than ours. I think this is massive overkill, to chop down perfectly good trees – and then try to establish new baby trees mid-drought.

At the risk of adding facts to a thread:
1. here is the presentation for the research underpinning the whole idea:
http://www.canberra.edu.au/centres/developing-cities/autumn-seminar/docs/brack.pdf
(the relevant parts are the graphs a few slides in, just skip past all the intro)

2. The tree policy:
http://www.tams.act.gov.au/play/parks_forests_and_reserves/trees/tree_policy
I was hoping for a more detailed policy than this, but I couldn’t find anything.

Ant, you are correct in the context, however, the thesaurus refers to lop as being cut, chop, hack, sever, crop, trim, slice, snip, slash. Several of these can be used for the sinister act that you correctly point out, however, not all trees are safe to remain standing, hence mine and possibly most Canberrans presumed knowledge of the state of health of every tree in the Canberra street scape.

Lopping them down.

As in cutting down the whole tree.

ant, the problem is that a lot of the trees planted in canberra aren’t native to this area, in fact, several aren’t natives at all. that is the biggest shame of this. The established oaks and conifers aren’t dropping brnaches, it is the shallow rooted natives that have more problems. and they should consider replacing several eucalypts with new eucalypts, anyway, rather than looping branches and putting the tree under stress…

Are they lopping the trees, or cutting them down? Lopping means to prune the branches.

Demolishing all the trees in Canberra is just managerial nonsense. Trees take years to grow, and nuking them all en masse would be horrific. I seriously question their dangerousness, especially the exotic species.

Doing a carefully planned replacement over some years makes more sense. If they de-racinated entire suburbs of their trees, the property values of those suburbs would plummet.

They have started doing staggered tree lopping in Yarralumla. last week they were cutting down every 2nd Eucy, along Empire Circuit. Surprise, surprise, they looked perfectly healthy, but I cant comment on the borer aspects of those trees already felled.

The 70% figure was new to me.

isn’t this old news? i thought the 200 million dollars to address the urban forest of canberra was announced some weeks ago and it was made quite clear that the work will be carried out over thirty years, so it isn’t as if the whole forest will disappear at once and there will be a no-tree time. is it?

It always upsets me when trees are cut down, even when I can understand rationally that it has to be done. It has a powerful emotional effect on me. It’s like losing old friends.

I’ve been known to talk to trees and stroke them, especially if they were due to be cut down the next day, and to try and save a seed or something.

It has also been the trigger for me moving out of an area when they cut down most of the trees at the shops. I just went, “It’s time to go.” And we did.

But safety is the most important factor. Sadly, we all have to go some time.

johnboy said :

amarooresident2 said :

I read the dead tree version of this story and my impression was that they WERE planning to do it progressivly (over the next 25 years). I think you have the wrong end of the stick on this one.

Well, as the CT is no longer a viable way to get information to the community thanks to their website policies they might want to put out a statement making it clear.

My understanding was it was too late in the oldest suburbs.

This story was cover by Stateline a few months back, and yes, I think Johnboy is right – for some areas it is too late to stagger the program. Griffith was one suburb that will lose a lot of trees in a short space of time.

They are trying to get rid of a lot of the older trees which have reached their safe life limit, before one loses a large limb or falls over and kills someone.

johnboy said :

Well, as the CT is no longer a viable way to get information to the community …

Hehehe

The ‘too late’ argument will end up being more about how it is done, rather than whether it is done. Unfortunately, the lesson from past attempts is they do remove every second tree in one go, then wonder why people get upset. Realistically, they could take out every fourth tree, have less of an impact, and then come back a couple of years later (not the next year).

The whole process would take longer, but it would lead to less excitement. Given the trees live for decades, the argument that all the trees from one street will all die or become dangerous on cue in a single year is a bit odd.

amarooresident2 said :

I read the dead tree version of this story and my impression was that they WERE planning to do it progressivly (over the next 25 years). I think you have the wrong end of the stick on this one.

Well, as the CT is no longer a viable way to get information to the community thanks to their website policies they might want to put out a statement making it clear.

My understanding was it was too late in the oldest suburbs.

The tree section has wanted to do this for a while, but liek everywhere else in government, struggled for funds.

Perhaps we should be asking who will project manage this, and whether they come from the GDE/AMC school of management?

I read the dead tree version of this story and my impression was that they WERE planning to do it progressivly (over the next 25 years). I think you have the wrong end of the stick on this one.