Apparantly there is no way to influence demand for housing.
While Nigel Satterley and his weekend tours of his estates have a lot of the blame for the farce that is WA property development. I’m glad this article highlighted the individuals attitude problem in regards trees.
So many people I know love to cut a tree down, and for the smallest reason. That its messy, in their way, blocks their view, they’re sprinting for the chainsaws.
I spoke to someone who lives in Bushmead estate where the development has kept a fair amount of trees. And they were complaining about leaves on the road, and in their yard! As if thats a reasonable issue to warrant choppin the trees down. The leaves probably gather so much as a result of the small block big house regime creating brick corridors.
The housing design in WA is so wrong for our wider life. Good article!
Working as as urban arborist, I heard all the excuses. I wish I wrote every one down to some sort of daily blog cause 90% were ridiculous.
I left urban arboriculture 7 years ago and started 17 years ago. Trust me when I say that there were so many people screaming for an urban forest and were sidelined by developers and other politics. I really wish heads would roll, they were so fucking wrong then and can’t admit it now. I rage quit because the stress of wanting to do the right, scientific thing was ignored for fucking idiots making god awful decisions instead. No one will suffer the consequences of their actions. Hot enough for ya?
Can you remember maybe one of the nore ridiculous excuses? for the giggles.
“I was out walking my four-legged son and an insect fell on me. The trees need to be removed.”
Oh my lord, haha. Thats even worse than i imagined! Those blasted insects! What next, leeeaves!!
I only like that one because the “four-legged son” was so memorable, it was a written request so it stuck. Insects, bees, pollen were the usual 3 requests related to most trees as we couldn’t stop them flowering with special magical chemicals so removal was the only option.
And, leaves, by far, were the most common request. From “having to rake every day” to “the leaves are staining my concrete driveway, I have to pressure-wash it constantly”, “gutters”, “road gutters have leaves in them”, “snakes are in the leaves, remove that entire forest (a literal urban forest!)”, “are there trees that don’t drop leaves, can you cut out these ones and use those ones instead?”
If the tree was big, it just needed to go, didn’t matter if it was hundreds of years old, had regular care with 40m EWPs, and the resident was near-death in their 80’-90’s. Silent generation, my arse!
The most common factor was the age of the resident. But, there were a surprising number of 30 year olds that were also fuckheads. I developed a deep literal hatred of boomers which has stuck with me, just based on the shit things they said and the selfishness of heating an entire neighbourhood to suit them. Problem is, they went to the Councillors and often had the trees removed through a political whinging process - “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” which is/was the Council secret if you ever want anything.
Saying all that, I still talk to our crews and there has been a significant shift in internal funding and policy related to trees (similar to this article). The behemoth of Government is always 3 years behind so you may note they they are all planting trees now in a fucking drought, rather than acting swiftly when it was fucking raining. Just wasting money and carbon, the money will dry up when the rain comes back and 75% of the trees will be dead, or there will be a fleet of water trucks wasting fuel pulling around 3T of water each. Don’t forget the residents poisoning or ringbarking the trees with whippersnippers because they prefer their grass.
I’m a little more hopeful enough people vote and direct their efforts in a way now that will force a higher level of engagement with these sorts of issues over the long term, (ie, heat island effect, aggressive and hard suburban areas). I think the example of Bush Mead is a reasonable start, an estate that maintained some untouched bush, and other older trees in amongst the houses, is an indicator that attitudes have begun to shift a little.
Athough if we are at the beginning of an attitudinal change, it needs to be large enough to make a meaningful difference. Thats not Bush Mead. And it probably neccesitates changing the way we build dwellings. Options could include smaller footprints, built together with shared walls, i’m sure theres a lot more.
Age, or more specifically ‘Generations’ (eg, Boomer, Y, X) distinctions is something i put very little weight on now. The defining characteristics that people ascribed seem to me, to be a result of people acting in their own best interests in the micro or macro situations they find themselves on. The tricky part of this is to convince people to assess their self interest in a wider sense. But people, en masse, only seem to take this view on when that wider sense has inarguable existential difficulties.
How hopeful did the referendum make you feel afterwards?
And the generational thing is a thing for trees, the 50’s onwards was a land clearing bonanza; boomers would have been young children watching, hearing, getting involved in large scale pastoral and clearing works, and were exposed to significant advertising around herbicides as the great new thing, while “hippies” are evil (now the Greens). I don’t blame them for not disliking trees (like seriously hate them - I had to talk to thousands of requests), they are a product of the environment at the time. The “hippies” that stayed environmentalists were up against it and all credit to them.
