Classic neighbour drill and tree poisoning

Eric Frei

I was called out today to inspect ailing trees, specifically a Jacaranda.

Tree has codominant leaders rising from a bifurcation at ground level.

One part of the canopy is dying back more than the other, that correlates linearly to holes, marked in red.

Total of 12 holes, of which only one was on the southern side of the tree, the majority were on the north western side.

The sawdust around the holes is not borer frass, it is swarf consistent with a drill bit. The sides of the holes are glazed consistent with a drill bit. The zip ties in the holes help demonstrate the angle.

The customer had commenced cutting down the dead melaleuca on the fence-line, he thought it died due to excess rain. Upon closer inspection there were 3 holes I found placed carefully between bark fissures. The angle of the holes and location suggest an awkward angle to use a drill and likely the best position to stand to drill such would be from the other side of the fence.

The customer will contact police.

The charges for such a case would be:-

• Trespass with criminal or malicious intent
• Malicious damage

Of course proving who done it is another thing.

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TrevMcRev

Man that sucks Hope they can pin it on the obvious neighbour.

Apocalypsse

Thats soo bad, at least with a few councils here they leave the poisoned tree as long as possible so the resident has an ugly dead tree on their nature strip to teach them a lesson. Hope that neighbour cops it though, gets the blood pumping when people think they can just destroy something that doesn't belong to them and get away with it.

Garry Brockley

thats discusting i hope they can bring a case against the neighbour for that, in the malaleuca pic is that the fence line view?
on the Jacaranda when you look at the drill hole positions you can see the drillers thought process, i bet if you took an angle for all the holes they would point nearly to a central point where they stood and drillid around them, probably right handed.
are you going to cut the melaleuca down and cut it open to confirm the drill holes?

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Eric Frei

That's up to the cops and the client.

I have also provided the client with a schedule of what to do to try and stop/slow or inhibit the poison, I suspect Round Up, Tordon or Tree and Blackberry Killer likely was used.

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derwoodii

While disappointing it amazes me that they just don't drill the seen surface roots add the toxin and cover with earth, this is very hard to spot. Leaving obvious trunk drill evidence may be part of the MO as to upset the tree owner.

Chasin them for criminal damages is seldom worth while & can bring bad blood between two fences where one side has shown it has no morals, so this can go bad real fast. I have suggested to customers the joys of malicious revenge eg subscribe em to unsavory mail lists a call to the ATO ASIO the local bikie chapter or consider the use of voodoo dolls or black magic curse, a great evening fun. Then plant a nice evil tree hard up against the fence.

Apocalypsse

You sir, are truely an evil man :P

kaazih

The poor Jacaranda seems to be one of the most picked on trees in these parts:

"but the leaves clog up my gutters"

or

"it's blocking my view"

I'm always loath to prune these trees as they seem to shoot out epicormic growth whenever a saw comes near

Bowani Siam

How would you stop/slow the spread of poison in a tree of that size?

Anyway, wow. That's pretty brazen. Unabashed tree vandalism. The culprits better watch out or else they might find 'borer holes' in their tyres and they'd bloody deserve it.

A week ago I saw the results of a similar attempt to poison a tree made on a small Norfolk Island Hibiscus. Apparently doing a terrible job of pruning off the side shoots wasn't cutting it anymore so I guess the vandals finally bit the bullet and bought some Round Up. They did a pretty half-arse job of poisoning it, it is now recovering, although it looks like a wreck. Even though it's only a small tree I find this kind of nonsense intolerable. Now they have a half dead tree blocking 1% of their view of the dirty harbour! Seriously, look how small the tree is compared to the expansive water views.

(Apologies for the second-rate pictures, I took them on my phone)

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Eric Frei

That is a very good question for a new thread.

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Bowani Siam

My god, you're right!

Stopping/Slowing the Effects of Poison in Trees?

Eric Frei

The cat is out of the bag.

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James Taylor

i don't condone tree poisoning at all and have seen many otherwise healthy and magnificent specimens killed by view hungry idiots. it's so hard to prosecute these people even when the culprit is blatantly obvious.

I can only think the people who poisoned the Norfolk Island Hibiscus did so because it is actually quite a weed in the Sydney region and has the potential to invade bushland as well as the fact it's seed pods can drop a extremely irritating fibreglass like material onto unwary passers by. Seeing the location of this tree next to a path and bench this would be my guess.

Bowani Siam

True, it can be a weed in context, and the fruits do have irritating properties. However, as it is planted on a suburban harbourside road far from natural bushland I can hardly believe that the culprits had some heroic environmental agenda. There are at least 15 larger specimens of this tree along the same road that remain UNTOUCHED. How can you account for the fact that all the view-blocking lower branches have been repeatedly removed over several years?