Ku-ring-gai is a much sought after area because of its high amenity and livability – a direct result of streetscapes full of tall trees and lush gardens.  Yet it is also sought after as a place for property investment.  Knock down small affordable houses, replace them with mega mansions and reap millions in profits.  

If allowed to continue, this will cumulatively transform the green paradise of Ku-ring-gai into concrete ‘nature deficit’ zones.

Across Greater Sydney there continues to be an epidemic of tree felling fuelled by the Exempt and Complying Development Codes introduced in 2008 that allows developers to denude properties of trees and gardens without Council permission. 

Friends of Ku-ring-gai Environment (FOKE) is constantly being contacted by residents who express distress, dismay and even trauma as they witness trucks, heavy machinery and cranes cutting down trees in their neighbourhoods.  Many say they cannot bear watching this destruction; many say they cannot bear listening to the sound of chain saws assaulting their ears.  Many ask – how can this happen?  Why are trees being cut down?  Isn’t this illegal? Why isn’t Council stopping it?  Then they mourn knowing they will never see those large trees again in their lifetime.

Along with this ‘knock down and rebuild’ tree removal frenzy, the NSW Government is legitimizing massive urban forest logging, not seen on a scale since the first timbergetters of the 1820s.  But this time it is even worse – because the intensity of development necessitates excavation. This will remove the seedbank thus sterilizing the potential for the forests to regenerate.

FOKE strongly supports Ku-ring-gai Council’s legal action against the NSW Government’s Transport Orientated Development (TODs). Why? Because if it is not challenged it will wipe out thousands of critically endangered canopy trees and destroy precious heritage conservation areas.

Ku-ring-gai’s architectural heritage is outstanding – often described as where the ‘natural’ dominates the ‘built’ form. In spring its gardens are ablaze with colour and utter beauty.  Each season brings yet another cascade of charm and delight.

The Ku-ring-gai local government area is a highly environmentally sensitive area surrounded by three national parks. It has two critically endangered communities – Blue Gum High Forest & Sydney-Turpentine Ironbark Forest.  

Ku-ring-gai’s Blue Gums are awe inspiring with their canopy stretching high into the sky and which provide vital habitat for possums, birds, reptiles and insects. These majestic trees survive along the corridor following the North Shore railway line; the same strip of land that is being targetted by the NSW Government for TOD densification rezonings.

Sydney’ s urban environmental movement began in Ku-ring-gai.  Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (1894) is one of the first national parks in the world and one of the first to be protected for the intrinsic value of nature.   1920s housewife Annie Wyatt was so incensed when she witnessed blocks of land being bulldozed that she established the Ku-ring-gai Tree Lovers’ Civic League.  Later she was pivotal in leading the movement to establish the first National Trust of Australia. 

It was builder labourer Jack Mundey who understood the importance of the urban environment.  This saved swaths of Sydney’s heritage and environment across Greater Sydney in the late 1970s, through the Green Bans.  Yet this vision is being abandoned by the Minns’ Labor government.  Instead, they are handing NSW planning controls over to private developers. This is despite corruption concerns (the ABC’s recent Four Corners investigations raised allegations of systemic corruption into the corporate strata management industry) and the existential threats of biodiversity extinction and climate change.

Urban forests are too valuable to be indiscriminately destroyed by ‘blanket one size fits’ rezonings. Urban trees are overwhelmingly beneficial not only to wildlife but to people’s emotions and physical health and wellbeing. With air quality plummeting, trees keep the air we breathe clean. With hotter and longer heat waves, trees will be more critical than ever – they will literally save lives.

The lessons of Easter Island seem to have been forgotten. Destroy trees. Destroy civilisation.

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