A million people blog and post and tweet about trees and a lot of what’s written is lovely. One of the more obscure posts I’ve read this week explained ‘tree tools‘.
The writer meant things made of metal and wood that you use to care for trees.
I thought she meant municipal arborists. (more…)
Sending out one of my regular shout-outs to Laman Street arborists: Phil Hewett, Dean Simonsen and Adrian Swain.
Do they want to come or not? Guess.
From: Save Our Figs
Wednesday, 18 January 2012 13:55 PM
The General Manager,
Newcastle City Council.
Re: Invitation to present and discuss council findings on Laman Street trees at a community meeting.
Dear General Manager (more…)
This is the media release we sent out yesterday about the visit to Newcastle by the developer of Quantified tree risk assessment , Mike Ellison, sponsored by Save Our Figs.
From the questions I’ve had about this from journalists today, I look forward to stories about his objectivity in the press tomorrow. (more…)
This is an email sent by Laman Street campaigner Ed Glatfelter-Jones to decision makers.
Lord Mayor Tate, Councillors, Mr Pearce, Ministers and Others,
As events appear to be moving quickly on Laman Street, I have opted to respond and comment on several items in this one message sent to multiple recipients. I have been informed by Cr Bob Cook that due to the length of my treatises, as he calls them, most in office will not bother to read them. I hope that is not the case. (more…)
Had a lovely figtail party outside the Art Gallery on Friday. Greeted the Premier with cheers and signs and our lovely former secretary escorted Mr O’Farrell from his car to the front entrance.
We could be forgiven for thinking that Council tried to usher him in the rear – condemned – entrance of the gallery, in order to avoid any members of the community outside the gallery, but what politician would want to avoid a happy, respectable, welcoming crowd?
Here’s a 1 minute video of his arrival.
I’ll wager he didn’t feel at risk under the trees. And Cr Cook has been spreading joy again: he has distributed a document about what he sees as lies about Laman Street spread by campaigners. Here’s Mark Hartley, one of the community’s arborists, on a small part of that ‘litany’:
‘The assertion that it has been proven that the root plates are defective is simply false. Only Marsden has undertaken an examination of the root plates under the road and the only evidence that he could provide was that the roots were not present in hydrophobic soils that were not conducive to root growth and development.
Marsden correctly forms the view that the root plates are not on the surface. The assumption that an asymmetric root plate is defective in itself is false and has been presented without a piece of supporting evidence. I was able to show a tree at Angkor Watt with significantly greater root plate asymmetry that has stood for hundreds of years.
In addition I can provide over 50 peer-reviewed and published papers that challenge the assumption that root plate asymmetry is a defect.
See “Anchorage and Asymmetry in the Root System of Pinus peuce” Mickovski, S. Ennos, R. Silva Fennica 37(2); “Anchorage of Mature conifer: resistive turning moment, root-soil plate geometry and root growth orientation” Lundstrom et el (2007) Tree Physiology 27, 1217 – 1227; “Adaptive Growth of Tree Root systems in response to wind action and site conditions” Nicoll, B & Ray, D. (1996) Tree Physiology 16, 891-898 as a start.
Cook refers to SULE but may not be aware that the originator of SULE, Jeremy Barrell, is one of the experts that NCC has disregarded, in spite of the fact that he acted independently of any party and received no remuneration for his assessment.’
I’ve posted this before but you can watch Barrell and his colleague Cashman talking about Laman Street here.
A tree in Tours in France, planted by Napoleon and not chopped down even though it needs support
He also says,
…I find it odd that there are numerous arborists who have come out in support of the retention of the trees because the risk of harm is not unacceptable…Has anyone seen the same support for the removal of the trees because of the risk they supposedly pose coming forward to the council?
The only support council has is from a group on a forum (who have been fed propaganda … with the hope of it causing damage to the SoF group). Some people on this believe that the trees should be removed to show the community that council makes decision and not the community. I agree with Cook that SOF does not represent the majority of the community, rather it represents the distinct majority of those who have an opinion either way about the trees. A large portion of the community do not care either way and unfortunately it is their money that NCC is wasting to avoid facing up to the facts “the trees do not pose an imminent risk.”
Thanks to Sharon Healey for the photo of the Premier.
Re-reading old emails I found some references to what Newcastle City Council erroneously call a casebook – that’s the mega file of tree failures that takes no account of all the trees that haven’t failed. You can find this 14MB file on Council’s website: they’re very proud of it.
I wonder how many times it’s been presented to elected Councillors to keep them in a state of fear. Three arborists commented on it: here’s some of what they had to say: (more…)
I decided the time is ripe to remind ourselves of some of the low points of the Laman Street fig saga. Flashback time. (more…)
After two and a half hours of debate and council chamber drama the extraordinary meeting was adjourned again, this time to allow the GM to seek legal advice regarding the ‘lawfulness‘ of Cr Osborne’s and Cr Claydon’s foreshadowed motions. (more…)
Get a load of this – ‘Operation Beanstalk’ is alleged to be the name of the process of felling the Laman Street trees. Which rocket scientist on Council thought of that, do you think? Perhaps the same person who thought of the Laman Street Not-Sorry book and liquidambars as replacement trees for the Hill’s figs. (more…)
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