Reports of illegal tree killing and vandalism have soared across Sydney this year,prompting councils to issue an urgent plea to the Minns government for more assistance in prosecuting people who destroy the city’s natural assets.
The destruction of 265 trees in Castle Cove has exposed water views.Nick Moir
AHeraldanalysis of council data shows local governments received. Multiple councils,including Sutherland Shire,Ku-ring-gai and Liverpool,had significant increases in reports of tree vandalism in 2023 compared to previous years.
Nobody is sure what is behind the destruction. But it has a hint of classic Sydney property greed. It is a relatively simple thing to covertly poison or cut down an impediment to a harbour view. And the new vista can add so much to the value of a property in Sydney’s overheated real estate market that the seldom-imposed and risible penalties make the crime extremely well paid.
Chopping down trees has long been part of the national myth. Cedar getters opened up the NSW mid and north coast and the timber became a huge local industry as Australia’s population spread and settled. Trees came down across the continent to fuel fires,build homes and industries for more than 150 years until the 1970s and 1980s,when the Terania Creek,Gordon-below-Franklin and Cape Tribulation protests helped usher the Greens into Australian politics,pushed governments to limit logging and created a new rural population – tree changers.
People have been illegally hewing trees in Sydney for years. Yet,Green Bans aside,somehow there was often a disconnect between the outrage inspired by logging companies in the bush and the furtive and continuing vandalism around the harbour. Many trees being taken out of an untouched valley is an easy story to tell,but a few trees,here and there,not so much.
But two mass tree-killing incidents,unparalleled in recent Sydney history,with more than 260 trees and up to 300 trees and other plants,may change all that.
Mayors,council staff and the federal member for North Sydney Kylea Tink are lobbying Planning Minister Paul Scully and Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig for help to investigate acts of vandalism and for the power to issue tougher penalties. They say they do not have the money to carry out criminal-level investigations,ordinarily a police matter.
In NSW,under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979,the maximum fine for illegal tree removal varies for corporations and individuals,with penalties ranging from $3000 to $5 million,depending on circumstances. But the reality is that few are fined. Cash-strapped councils bear the weight of prosecution,but they so rarely catch somebody in the act that in the four years after 2018,only 19 cases relating to trees,vegetation or biodiversity were prosecuted by councils in the Land and Environment Court.
Other countries are not so lackadaisical about protecting trees. Italy has laws granting 20,000 trees legal protection as natural monuments. In England,growing outrage at property barons,private home owners and vandals chopping down century-old trees around the country saw the government introduce legislation last January that made illegal tree felling punishable by unlimited fines and prison sentences.
With the Sydney tree vandalism,the worst in memory,the Minns government must consider increasing fines and toughening sanctions. The scale of tree destruction has clearly outpaced the level of current penalties and failed as a deterrent.
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