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I know examples where council sends a couple of notices to plant these replacement trees, never actually ensuring they're planted. Please enforce these directives
Stephen,
I think your observation is accurate. It's always pleasing to see comments such as yours, indicating that people are interested in the matter, and not content to assume that simply because the council is doing it, all must be right with the world.
Wordy reasons and excuses such as those shown above for this application are often a red flag. The old 'risk of failure' catch-all.
In the past couple of years, our small group has done an amateur analysis and follow-up over time of a significant number of these Waverley TPOs.
The limitation is of course that we can only track tree removal and replacement that is clearly visible from the public domain, meaning pretty-much at the fronts of the properties.
Without getting into detail, of which there's a lot, our findings are that a concerning percentage of the required replacement trees are never planted, and a significant percentage of those that *are* planted are removed some time, and sometimes quite a short time, after council inspection is completed, if indeed there ever was one.
This analysis, conducted over quite a reasonable period of time as mentioned, would lead us to be concerned that the scheme is something of a paper tiger and that perhaps it's being done to get ticks in (green) boxes, with little genuine commitment to the program and the need for it.
It's our intention at some stage to challenge the council on this matter and ask it to publish for public review a detailed analysis of all instances of TPO listings which fall specifically under the tree removal and replacement category.
We will seek to have included, photographic evidence, which does not identify addresses or houses but simply the subject trees, over a time-line for each tree removed and replaced, and details of fines levied for non-compliance, especially for unauthorised removals of required replacement trees. These details will include no personal information, but give the suburb and road name, the reason for the fine, the amount, the date levied and the date paid.
It would be interesting to compare this to our study and evidence.
I agree with the previous comments and have questions.
Who has assessed the eucalypt to be at risk of failure? A professional arborist?
Who gave permission for the lower limbs to be pruned and why? Being a eucalypt it may regrow the lower limbs.
What species of eucalypt is it?
Why is the garden bed assumed to have no depth...has there been some sort of concrete laid under the soil for some unspecified reason? If not then the soil should be assumed to be normal depth for the area.
How old is the eucalypt? There is no evidence presented of senescence. Eucalypts can live for hundreds of years, and become increasingly valuable as habitat when they are over a hundred years old because tree hollows start to form then.
At 120 years a hollow large enough for a frog might form, after 180 years a hollow large enough for a parrot to nest might form. Hollows large enough for owls or possums take 220 years to form. Even if a eucalypt is replaced with another eucalypt, the clock is set back to the beginning in terms of years before hollows will form.
It takes longer than our lifetime to form a hollow, and we should be allowing trees to grow old so that the next generations will have still be able to enjoy having hollow nesting species. There are over 340 native species which need hollows to nest and to live, at least 100 of which are listed as rare or threatened. Lack of tree hollows has contributed to many extinctions.
Some of the species which need tree hollows can be seen recorded in the "Tree hollows and significant habitat trees" project in iNaturalist here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=tree-hollows-and-significant-habitat-trees-in-australia&verifiable=any&view=species
So retaining trees is vital.
The council's default position should be refusal unless there are compelling and unusual reasons for the removal. As so well expressed by Margaret Avian's comment, trees removed are not being replaced, and often the applicant has no intention of allowing a replacement to survive.
We have been losing our tree canopy at an alarming rate, at just the time that the the city is striving to increase canopy cover to deal with the heating from climate change, and to try to keep the city livable in the increasing heat. According to the City of Sydney's Urban Forest Strategy, the goal is to increase tree canopy cover to 27% by 2050. This includes an interim target of reaching 23% canopy cover by 2030.
Thank you
