Opinion: Teneriffe residents up in arms over Council’s tree removal policy
Brisbane City Council has form dealing with pesky trees and last year chopped down 40 of them to make way for the Kangaroo Point Bikeway widening. Now Teneriffe residents are fighting to protect their big beautiful fig trees, writes Mike O’Connor
Opinion
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IN A masterful display of Monty Pythonesque logic, the Brisbane City Council last week declared that trees with a diameter of less than 15cm were not really trees at all.
Thus their removal to make way for the Mt Coot-tha zipline could not constitute damage to the environment because they didn’t really exist.
The arrogance was breathtaking. It was like announcing that people weighing less than 70kg aren’t really people, so therefore, council buses aren’t overcrowded because half the passengers don’t exist.
The council has form in dealing with pesky trees, and last year chopped down 40 of them to make way for the Kangaroo Point Bikeway widening. This was despite a submission from the CBD Bicycle User Group saying riders were unlikely to use the bikeway because the ramp entering it was too steep.
The council, however, has been forced to concede that the big leafy thing with a trunk at 15 Vernon Tce, Teneriffe, falls within its definition of a tree. It wishes it wasn’t so that cutting it down wouldn’t be seen as an act of vandalism, but I walk past it most mornings and it is most definitely a tree.
It’s one of many planted along what is one of the city’s more attractive boulevards, their branches combining to form a leafy archway over the street. The council says its roots have affected a nearby apartment building, so the tree must go. It also claims that it has been working for six years to “save the tree”.
If so, it has been working in incredible secrecy for, until a few weeks ago, not a single word had been uttered publicly about plans to cut it down. There has been no communication with the local ratepayers, of whom I am one, nor with the Teneriffe Progress Association.
There are dozens of these majestic trees along Vernon Tce and also along James St at New Farm, one of the city’s more popular and attractive shopping precincts.
If root systems can be used as an excuse to remove one, it seems likely that others will also fall to the council’s chainsaws. Why? Because the council is afraid that if the root systems affect nearby properties, it might cost it money. Answer? Chop down the trees.
It is hard to accept that the root systems cannot be managed if the will existed to do so. This, of course, would be the more difficult path to tread. Getting out the chainsaw is much easier.
The tree, it says will be replaced with a tabebuia palmeri. The green canopy of the Moreton Bay fig, then is to be replaced with a South American tree with pink flowers.
Progress Association president Ben Pritchard says the association has expert advice from geotechnical engineers that directly conflict with the reasons given by the council for its removal.
I asked local councillor Vicki Howard’s office if there was a plan to remove the trees in Vernon Tce.
It replied that “Council takes great pride in Brisbane’s reputation as a clean, green and sustainable city and is working towards increasing the city’s natural green cover to 40 per cent”.
As one time US ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson once remarked: “A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”
The tree is scheduled to be cut down tomorrow. Feel free to come along and voice your disapproval.
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