Sean Freeman

Its funny you know perhaps our attitudes would be slightly different if it were built infrastructure that had been damaged/vandalised and destroyed, but because its trees, and trees that no one individual owns, not in a neat little garden surrounded by a neat little fence and a neatly mown lawn then its deemed somehow less of an issue to destroy natural assets??

(But a word of caution newspapers do not print the truth, radio and TV do not broadcast the truth they sell a product and package it the way they believe it will sell best so I always tread carefully when basing my response upon newspaper reports Phrases implying spurious correlations to repressive government systems like Soviet Communism carry absolutely no weight with me they merely serve to undermine the strength of the arguement being presented)

I have seen a fair bit of this in the 3 months I've been working in the Gold Coast, oddly stunted dune vegetation in front of million dollar apartments...hmmm I wonder who did that????? Can't prove anything, even still photos have a hard time standing up in court.

It would be great if we actually got involved in how our local community runs, and perhaps some on this forum do but my experience is that the vast 95% majority don't, and don't want to either. There is a an attitude that its not our responsibility, we seem to want a higher authority to manage all the minutia of a straining community but don't want their management to impact on what we percieve to be our domain at all....potential views included!

Councils know they will very very rarely (if ever) get a conviction over such environmental damage, and the consequences are pathetically minor in any case.....Personally I appluad the council for drawing the line in the sand hopefully they follow through and do the same in other instances...I have seen trees poisoned with poison trails running back to individual residences...yet the law is remarkably impotent to provide punishment for such vandalism of property owned in the end by all of us!

I have never come across any authority that got it right all the time indeed rarely do they get it right most of the time! Why is that surprising to any of us.....councils, businesses, etc..are made up of the people just like us, they loose sight of the big picture and stuff up just like us, but more importantly need assistance in improving the way they do things, just like all of us.

Councils all over Oz have various variations of vegetation management/protection all aimed at preventing the continued decline and destruction of the environment in which we live, some do it better than others, some have models that draw the people into the process better than others, but not one that I have ever come across has the enforcement mechanisms and tools to actually effectively monitor their huge tree assets, and effectively enforce the standards and values they articulate.

However we actual live and work amongst the council (public) owned tree assets, we actually can, when we want to, play a big part in maintaining the quality of the environment around us.....we expect much from our local authorities (and sure much of it is justified expectations) we often have standards set for them in their business activities, management practices that many of us (IMO) do not live up to ourselves.

I don't work for any one council, i don't think highly of any politician in general (I don't know any Aussie polies personally) I do know of many serious problems in the many LGA's I do on occaision work for, but I also know a significant number of council tree officers in Queensland and without exception they all are passionate about the trees they look after, and when things go pear shaped they are far more frustrated than you or I.......those people need our assistance and support to do a better job in their role in our communities.

I guess I've meandered well and truely off track, sorry.

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Sean

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
- Kahlil Gibran