Older and wiser living beings

"There are many things older and wiser than us humans"

- YD Bar-ness in Wood for the Trees, The Big Issue #465

125+ year old Cook Pines watch over High Cross Park at dusk

Trees take a long time to grow, but they live longer than us. And even if 8 trees are planted for every 1 lost in Randwick, there is no guarantee that those newly planted trees will survive to the same age or size as the ones lost.

We think the only wise thing to do then is to protect the large, mature, healthy trees we have. Somehow many of them have survived for over a century now, despite the pressures they face in a busy urban setting including pollution from traffic, and competition for space (both above and below ground).

Sometimes it seems we need children to teach us the things we might have forgotten along the path to 'adulthood'. Our most recent campaign video features some of our youngest Treekeepers, bringing it back to basics.

It does not have to be as hard as we make ourselves think. We make decisions everyday based on our priorities. So it is a simple question of using good sense to sort out those priorities.

A healthy environment needs to come first. Without it, nothing else is possible.

Unfortunately, our current Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian prioritises 'the market' over trees, community and our local environment in general.

She made this clear when some of us from Keeping Randwick's Trees spoke to her personally at Coogee Beach on Tuesday (24th February, 2015).

What she does not realise is that 'the market' does not value trees (and it cannot, really - our next blog post will be about this). There are no market-based incentives for developers to keep trees around, except for the relatively small cost of replacing them (which means that cost is not a disincentive, just something to add to the accounting books).

We need government (at all levels)

that listens to its people first,

not 'the market'.

We're sure any old tree could have told you all that, wise as they are...

Check out this article, 'The World's 10 Oldest Living Trees', by the Mother Nature Network - just amazing!

How trees can grow when we let them...