Does Adelaide care about its trees?
Reporter: Ian Henschke
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IAN HENSCHKE, PRESENTER: According to the experts, the drought and the water restrictions have pushed the state's trees to the limit and beyond. Last summer it was even estimated up to 15 per cent of them were dead or dying.
The recent rains provided some relief, but when perfectly healthy trees are being felled in the name of progress, it has people asking just how much do we care about our trees.
PROF. CHRIS DANIELS, URBAN ECOLOGIST: We have got to be careful of the death by 1000 cuts. Every single example might sound good. But when you total them up, that's a lot of trees disappearing for a lot of different circumstances across the Adelaide metropolitan area.
That'll change the climate, the quality of the city, so we need to be cautious about the decisions we make relatively flippantly about our green infrastructure.
IAN HENSCHKE: After the recent downpours, the parklands look green and lush. They are even filled with frolicking and warbling magpies, But to the trained eye of the urban ecologist professor Chris Daniels, all is not well.
PROF. CHRIS DANIELS: Oh Ian yes, I think we'll loss a significant number of trees this summer. And itís both natives and introduced species. People tend to think natives are immune to drought, they are not.
IAN HENSCHKE: He's able to point out native trees that are dead and dying, and says that being water-wise at the expense of public parks and home gardens is a mistake.
PROF. CHRIS DANIELS: There's a tendency to blame plants, blame gardeners, to blame the green infrastructure on our problems with water. That is grossly unfair, they might use a proportion of our water, but they give us back so much more, and as part of this debate the loss of the importance, and the significance of trees, shrubs, understorey, grass, to our quality of life is getting lost.
And it's not just trees. We see the appearance of artificial lawn instead of lawn, for those that want the amenity value. It's the wrong way to think about it. We should think about how to keep a green infrastructure with the water weíve got available, not one or the other.
IAN HENSCHKE: But more and more trees are being cut down, and it's not just due to the drought. They are being felled as part of makeovers by local councils, like this one in Semaphore's main street and another on Walkerville Terrace, where the council, as part of a deal with a shopping centre developer will remove all the existing street trees and replace them with jacarandas. Itís a move that is totally confusing from a couple from the country visiting the area.
LIZ MANIFOLD, RENMARK RESIDENT: We're going to get less rain. The river land we are only on 10 per cent of irrigators water licence, and we are trying to save every tree we can. So I don't know why in Adelaide they are trying to cut them down.
IAN HENSCHKE: And it wasn't just what's happening in Walkerville that had them upset.
JIM MANIFOLD, RENMARK RESIDENT: What they are doing down there on the way to Port Adelaide is taking the trees all those trees out to the Entertainment Centre is ridiculous.
IAN HENSCHKE: The bulldozing of trees as part of the tram extension is being done with the blessing of the State Government. It's the same story in the parklands near the zoo with the giant panda pavilion project.
PROF. CHRIS DANIELS: The moment there's any negative to the tree, the solution is remove the tree. Now once a tree has gone, it doesn't come back. We can plant seedlings somewhere else, but they'll take decades - 50 years, 100 years to become a significant wonderful tree.
So this quick decision to remove rather than treat or to manage or to find other solutions to the problems is really a big issue.
IAN HENSCHKE: The irony of clearing some of Adelaide's urban forest to help create the pavilion for the giant pandas on the endangered species list because of deforestation hasnít escaped the notice of Adelaide City councillor Anne Moran.
ANNE MORAN, ADELAIDE CITY COUNCILLOR: I understand the council was told they had to be removed to allow pathways for the hordes of people stampeding to see the pandas. I'm sure there'll be lots of people. But you have to ask the question: couldn't they weave between the trees? There's a lot of open access. It's puzzling why the creek had to be so denuded.
IAN HENSCHKE: The Adelaide City Council advised against the tree removal, but because Botanic Park comes under the State Government act it went ahead. Anne Moran says she can't talk in detail about the process due to a government gag about councillors commenting before and after a decision has been made.
ANNE MORAN: I can talk in generalities, what you find is if six trees were requested for removal you can usually multiply it by a factors of 10, trees under the significant size don't need permission to be removed. We can see by the tree stumps there that quite a lot of trees and foliage have been removed. In fact thereís nothing much left is there.
IAN HENSCHKE: Not far from the panda project more of botanic park's tree has gone the way of the Dodo to make way for road widening and car parking. And according to Anne Moran, when the Government gets involved with tree removal it's a bad signal to the community.
ANNE MORAN: While I can't comment on applications for their tree removals, out in the public, they see the Government chopping down lot of trees and feel, "Why do we have to keep our big river red in our backyard if they do it so easily?" I'm sure they don't. But I think thatís the perception out there that they are pretty chop happy at the moment.
IAN HENSCHKE: But the Minister for planning responded by stating when it comes to trees in the parklands the independent development assessment commission rather than the council is the approving authority. And the State Government would have been required to make the same case as any other land holder in seeking approval for removing the trees for the tram extension and the zoo expansion.
People haven't decided that we need to support trees and we have a responsibility towards looking after our trees, whether it be the big ash out the front of our place, or trees in the parklands. People often expect either someone else to look after the tree or when it becomes bothersome you remove it. We should be thinking about looking after trees and looking after the natural environment in the same way we look after our pets, and we have to take the rough with the smooth.