2nd April 2009, 01:53 PM
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|  Massive Sycamore tree culling NSW
Stop that tree: slow but sure struggle against sycamores | smh.com.au  Fighting back to save our native wildlife...TAFE students learn how to poison the sycamore trees.
Photo: Sahlan Hayes Quote:
MANY a song has been written about the stateliness of the sycamore tree, but it is maths that best describes the awfulness of its invasion of the steep slopes above the nation's most beloved caves.
Bush regenerator Trish Kidd estimates there are about two million of the trees, grown from winged seeds which escaped the garden around the 113-year-old Jenolan Caves House.
Capable of growing to 35 metres and surviving up to 600 years, the descendants of the garden sycamores have been reclassed as weeds as they smother native plants, take food from platypus and fish and, according to recent research, are possibly changing the ecosystem in the caves.
But teams of volunteers have only managed to eradicate 5 per cent of them in the 250 hours of work they have put in and Ms Kidd, assistant secretary of the Lithgow-Oberon Landcare Association, wonders if the trees love the Jenolan limestone just as the 220,000 visitors every year enjoy the caves carved from it.
"The sycamores are having a good time," said Ms Kidd, who this week taught her TAFE conservation course students how to kill them by injecting or painting them with glyphosate.
Taking out vegetation wholesale can make the soil unstable, so only patches can be tackled at a time, making it a 30-year project in Ms Kidd's estimation. Another 30 people will eradicate more in the first weekend of May, with another hit planned in November.
The problem with these European members of the maple family is their broad leaves, which form a canopy in spring and summer that steals light from natives and stops them germinating successfully. Insects which feed birds, frogs and water life also disappear.
"When they drop their leaves, it's in one big go. Around acquatic systems they can reduce the amount of available oxygen for aquatic invertebrates, which then impacts on [other] animals," said Ms Kidd.
Biologist Grant Hose, a senior lecturer in biological sciences at Macquarie University, said sycamore leaves form litter inside cave entrances that changes the energy levels underground. "You have a surge of carbon energy … It is a bit of a sugar hit," he said.
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