New Amendment for trees on development sites

 

This is a slide from the City of Stirling’s  Urban Forest Community Consultation PowerPoint presentation, which is well worth looking at.

The City of Stirling’s new Scheme Amendment 9 has been approved by the State Government and now adopted.

This is definitely a step in the right direction, because if forces developers to leave room for at least some trees.  However, there is nothing to stop home owners from chopping them down in the future.

It was decided by the council that this Amendment 9 would be an temporary measure just  for a couple of years while they workout a more comprehensive tree protection amendment.

Development (infill) is causing most of the tree removal, but a lot are being removed from private land  unnecessarily by home owners because they think they are “messy” or because they erroneously perceive them to be “dangerous”.

Large trees near houses should be check every couple of  years, to make sure they are safe by qualified Arboricultural Consultant (preferably not one who profits from removing them or give them a brutal prune).  Trees or some branches can be dangerous and sometimes do need to be removed.   But statistics clearly show that trees are not nearly as dangerous as people think.   Humans are not very good at getting the odds right, see 10 ways we get the odds wrong.

Predatory, unqualified ‘cowboy’ tree loppers don’t help.  They run around telling people that their perfectly healthy trees are dangerous or need “a good pruning” to make the safe just for the money. If you look at the Consumer Protection website you will see that dodgy tree loppers are a big problem.   Pruning a tree incorrectly causes new branches to grow that can be weaker than the original branches.  Trees should always be pruned by qualified Arborists who adhere to the Australian Standard of Pruning Amenity Trees.

As for the mess, well the down side of living in a beautiful healthy leafy suburbs is a bit of leaf litter.  Below are images from Onslow Road in Shenton Park.  The many benefits that trees provide for our physical and mental health and property values are out weigh a bit of leaf litter.  The leaves make great mulch.

 

Some look down and see dead leaves,  others look up and see the trees

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *