Protect old trees
05/Jan/2010
Comments:
I AM totally behind Richard Pennicuik and the other citizens in Gosnells who have committed themselves to protecting the old neighbourhood trees.
And I applaud the efforts of their MLA, Chris Tallentire, in calling on the Gosnells shire to provide expert evidence of the risks these trees pose to passers by. It is only a pity that the other 20 gum trees were destroyed without this sort of evidence being provided and with very little notice being given to residents and others of the impending tree removal.
For far too long local councils all over the State have embarked on programs to rid their streets of old, sometimes majestic trees. They do this in the name of “safety” without explaining what they actually mean by safety. What are the risks they are really trying to avoid?
What odds are they not willing to accept? One in ten thousand, one in a million? And how much are they prepared to pay to avoid those risks?
It is easy to just cry “safety” and then come in with their chainsaws blazing, as it were, if it only costs a couple of hundred of somebody else’s money to do so.
Civil disobedience too, as Mr Pennicuik has demonstrated, is nowadays the only way to call attention to some of the nonsense going on and with a great deal of perseverance and luck hopefully get the desired result.
And while it seems silly to put so much effort into saving one or two trees when the environment is taking much bigger beatings at the hands of governments and big business throughout the world, we cannot all address everything all the time.
Every little effort counts.
as posted here
