Sydney's mass tree vandalism
“This is happening all over the country, all of the time."

"A disjunct between weak punishment and the crime, a colonial-settler impulse to control native bush, an overriding sense, perhaps, that public property has less value than private – impels them, regardless, to vandalise majestic trees."

"The novelist and celebrated nature writer James Bradley says the “hatred of trees” is a settler-colonial legacy of the desire to impose order on the natural landscape and a symptom of increased alienation from nature."

“Trees have helped shape and sustain human cultures for hundreds of thousands of years. Many Indigenous cultures recognise this with systems of reciprocity that connect them to trees, within which trees are not just living beings, but actually relatives or kin. That connection has been disrupted by the processes of extraction that have seen most of the world’s forests cleared, and the hostility to trees you hear when people complain about their messiness, or them blocking their view."

“The more science learns about trees, the more we realise that even though they exist upon quite different timescales to humans, they are beings, with the ability to communicate and learn. And that they aren’t just good for the environment, they’re good for us, and just being around them makes us calmer, improves our mood, and makes us feel more connected to the world around us.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2023/dec/10/tree-vandalism-australia-why-removals

James Bradley
https://cityoftongues.com/about/
#HarbourViews #PropertyValues #Sydney #views #LaneCove #CastleCove #crime #entitlement #SettlerSociety #legacy #BotanicalColonisation #LoggingIndustry #values #extractivism #reciprocity #NativeForests #biodiversity #wildlife #TheBush

‘It’s all about entitlement. Simple’: the rampant acts of tree vandalism on Australia’s foreshores

Trees are a public asset. When they are illegally destroyed in pursuit of better views or property prices, the losses are many and profound

The Guardian

When land is a money machine...
The illegal killing of 265 trees on Sydney’s North Shore is not just vandalism. It’s theft on a grand scale

https://theconversation.com/the-illegal-killing-of-265-trees-on-sydneys-north-shore-is-not-just-vandalism-its-theft-on-a-grand-scale-212844
#Sydney #values #NorthShore #CastleCove #vandalism #trees #views

The illegal killing of 265 trees on Sydney's North Shore is not just vandalism. It's theft on a grand scale

The loss of so many trees in Sydney’s Castle Cove represents the theft of environmental benefits and services from future generations of Australians.

The Conversation

They kill for views in Sydney
The equivalent of 14 tennis courts of habitat destroyed
."265 trees have been destroyed… including the habitat of animals like beautiful lyrebirds, bandicoots, and wallabies that have only sort of just come back into the area as well."
"You're talking about $5 million, $6 million houses here so if you're fined $50,000 or whatever, that's nothing to them. It needs to be jail time and it needs to be millions of dollars."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-30/tree-vandalism-in-castle-cove/102792692
#trees #Angophora #waterfront #reserve Willowie Road #CastleCove #Sydney #crime

Hundreds of trees cut and poisoned at Sydney's Castle Cove with reward offered for information

Trees covering the equivalent of 14 tennis courts of land have been cut and poisoned at Castle Cove, decimating important habitat for native animals.

ABC News