There are a couple of towns in the Hunter that sadly have a love-hate relationship with urban wildlife. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘bats’
It ain’t over till it’s over 5.10.2011
October 5, 2011
Laman Street seen from Civic Park
Do you know what was happening in Darby Street tonight? At 1am, there were a total of five people: two in a noodle shop, two on bikes and me on foot . I’m pretty sure I was the only one there to check if tree fellers had moved into Laman Street. (more…)
A Little Whine for Mother’s Day 8.5.2011
May 8, 2011
Here are some of the things I learned this week. (more…)
Mulch 18.1.2011
January 18, 2011
Anyone who gardens knows there are good reasons to mulch around plants. (more…)
Burdekin Park 13.1.2011
January 13, 2011
Dragged the whole family Drove to Singleton today and visited the grey-headed flying foxes in Burdekin Park. (more…)
Council has agreed to do the Pull Test 17.11.2010
November 17, 2010
Back from the brink again. (more…)
Day one 6.10.2010
October 6, 2010
Here’s a piece of advice for the next time you take your city council to court: have a lawyer sitting next to you so the proceedings can be interpreted for you. (more…)
Home-grown bats and council irony
March 28, 2010
I went on a bushwalk yesterday with my daughters to see if there has been any damage done by flying fox colonies to trees. (more…)
The Vision Thing for design workshop
February 14, 2010
Double click on this and you’ll be able to read it. Note the deadline: Feb 22
You can also go to the website to tell council your vision for Laman Street. You really should do this because weight of numbers is important. If council only have input from the people who are lucky enough to go to the charette and those people are overwhelmed by the spin put forward at the workshops and naive enough to believe it, then the trees will go and we’ll have our very own Concord Hospital in the middle of Newcastle (see last post).
Options could include:
Leave the street as it is: it’s fantastic, well-loved and viewed as safe by its users. Newcastle people have not been swayed by talk of the risk of the trees and are skeptical about the motives behind the current moves to remove the trees.
Look after the trees well: mulch around their bases and get rid of the palms growing out of the middle of them. Engage an arborist with the will and expertise to advise on tree preservation. Our own council arborists no doubt have this if they’re allowed to do their job.
Replace the figs that are missing from the eastern end of the street. Council moved to replace them as a matter of urgency in 2008.
Put disabled parking at the eastern end of the art gallery where presumably staff parking is now.
Put picnic tables and more benches in Civic Park.
Put a playground in Civic Park. This would greatly increase the relevance of and connection to the park for Newcastle residents. (Please no more Ausplay equipment, though.)
If someone is set on increasing the size of the art gallery and can’t rebuild because Newcastle’s residents have insisted on keeping the figs, the library could be moved and the gallery expanded into the Cultural Centre. Someone clever and creative suggested the Post Office building. That would stop that poor thing rotting away. Have we sold the wonderful museum building yet? (Wasn’t that a terrible move. The only museum in Australia that made a profit.) That would make a good library.
If you insist on having five minute only parking in the street (which you may not since it’s just part of the spin) then a bus needs to go up Laman street to make it easier for people to get to the library.
Light up some of the trees in Civic Park with fairy lights the way New York does.
Make a feature of the fauna in Laman Street: signage talking about how the grey-headed fruit bat is vulnerable, its numbers have been decreasing and that figs are an important part of their diet. Signage naming the birds that use the street trees. Suggest that anyone walking up the street at night take an umbrella – I can speak from experience…
Signage relating to the history of the street. The cultural collection has some great pictures you could use for this.
Signage relating to how big a contribution the trees of Laman Street make to the city: carbon sequestration, shade, reducing stormwater, dealing with air pollution, cooling the street, prolonging bitumen life, slowing taffic.
And what happened to the silver pointy sculpture that has been outside the gallery for a million years? It’s like anything: you don’t appreciate it till it’s gone.
In France at the Luxembourg gardens there were permanent structures that enabled free outdoor photographic exhibitions. A walk in the shade of the trees, the gallery and the library all attract people but that may attract even more. One or more of them could showcase the exhibit inside the gallery.
A tourist information sign at the end of the street at the corner of Darby Street with a map, beaches, galleries, shopping centres, movie theatres, transport info, skateparks etc.
If extending the gallery into the cultural centre isn’t a possibility and you insist it’s necessary, build an extension out the back where the car park now is.
Bottom line: leave the trees where they are.
If tree replacement can’t be avoided because of council’s intransigence then you should replace them with trees that are equally grand (click on this link and you’ll see some huge trees being moved) as the trees in place now. If Hill’s figs are your problem then you should use Port Jackson figs or Moreton Bay figs and they should be fully grown and planted using modern technology so that the trees are safe from the effects of roadworks in the future and so that the built environment is safe from the trees.
Bottom line: the people of Newcastle should not have to tolerate another Tyrrell Street debacle.
Leave the trees alone or replace them with trees that are the same size.
Good news about fun Council meeting, not so good news about bats
February 4, 2010
The council meeting on Tuesday Feb 2nd was fun (sort of). The charette process was discussed of course and the things I recall about it are:
Nuatali Nelmes asked about the finding that the radar investigation showed great news* about tree roots (ie that they were where they weren’t supposed to be. She wanted to know whether this was going to be made public.A council officer told her it would definitely be part of the information given to the community.I wish he’d been asked about why the wait but you can’t have everything.
- council officers were asked about the information sessions following the charette rather than being before. In my last post I quoted several links which indicate that the standard is to have public information sessions before the charette.
- Even though there was no change made to this unfortunate order, it’s always good for council to know that the community are interested in the process and its effectiveness.
- Michael Osborne pointed out that environment groups had been omitted from the chosen/appointed group of the charette. Judy Jaeger (I presume) from council said that once they notify councillors and the community about the members of the group they can point out omissions and an attempt will be made to remedy this.
- Aaron Buman said the fact that the charette was going to cost $70000 was terrible and set an unfortunate precedent. I couldn’t agree more with the cost issue: we could as a city save lots of money asking for another arborist with a focus on tree preservation to have a look at the trees and stop talking about getting rid of them. This street is not in need of design. And now we know the trees have roots in the right place, which would explain why all but one look terrific.Anyway…
- It surprises me that he says this charette sets a precedent: I first heard of charettes at the November 2009 Ward 1 community Forum where one of the speakers discussed this, I think in relation to Hunter Street’s ‘revitalisation’. Council had, I think, already had one, but I’m happy to be corrected.
It was good news that the Bogey Hole came up. The whole of Newcastle has been up in arms since it was revealed that the Department of Lands and Property Management have floated the idea of closing it. One of the councillors suggested Council take it over and fix it up. Sensibly it was pointed out that taking over its care from the State Government before it’s been ‘fixed up’ is something we probablycan’t afford and shouldn’t have to. Council should be putting pressure on Lands and Property Management to look after it the way it deserves rather than neglect it, but it’s otherwise not council’s problem.
What a shame Councillor Boyd isn’t as interested in Laman Street as a heritage and tourism issue as he is the Bogey Hole.They’re both important, in different ways.
If the council chamber were a school yard you’d be having a look at your bullying policy. If they have one at NCC, it’s not working. To see middle-aged men apparently picking on fellow councillors was unpleasant, to say the least.
Did you know?
Grey-headed fruit bats are endangered? If you live anywhere near fig trees you’ll hear the bats at night. They’re fantastic in Laman Street: I heard them as I walked back to my car after the council meeting.
You may have read about the issues in Singleton where they have lots of bats in Burdekin Park.The locals don’t like it, according to the paper and some of the trees the bats are living in are dying.
The bats are listed as vulnerable.Bats’ numbers are estimated to have halved since European colonisation.There was a study in Sydney that showed that their numbers are declining by 6% a year there. This is mainly due to habitat loss but there are other factors such as legal and illegal culling.
At that rate, they will be functionally extinct within a few decades.
Apparently the passenger pigeon in the US went from numbering in the billions to extinct in a matter of 40 years, an example of why we shouldn’t think an apparently numerous species is safe.
In the Year of Biodiversity it’s important to look at the big picture: bats are important because they pollinate native species like the Spotted Gum – a species that is also, surprisingly and sadly, endangered in the Hunter – and do so over a wide area. Bats feed on a variety of flowering and fruiting native trees and fly between 30-100km a night, spreading up to 60000 seeds a night. (I can’t begin to imagine how you would count that.)
So while insurers and council officers worry mainly about public liability there are so many other issues in Laman Street, not least the animals and birds that will suffer as a result of the loss of habitat. Home
*my words
