The trunk of a healthy 300+ year old Angophora lies beside the highway in Bullaburra

Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia

[Photo by our investigator, 20130403, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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Government destruction of Bullaburra has begun.  Last Monday, April Fools Day 2013, they came and killed Bullaburra’s magificent Angophora to make way for a trucking expressway through the village.  But who are the fools who destroy our native heritage?

To many perhaps this is just another tree.  Some people value trees and ecology.  Others have deep value for wildlife and other animals, especially their pets.  Many people value where they live and grow very attached to where they live for reasons that can seem difficult for others to appreciate.  But it is the existence rights of species that humans ignore besides their own self-serving interests.  Male Baby Boomers remain the most extreme in their self-righteousness, and those in government prescribe utilitarian dictates over the rights of the few.

Elie Wiesel, novelist, political activist, and Humanities Professor at Boston University, has said that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.  The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.

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Witnessing an old friend being slaughtered

[Photo by our investigator, 20130403, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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A native tree that once was part of an Angophora (Sydney Redgum) forest, existed way back when the three explorers Lawson, Wenthworth and Blaxland crossed the Blue Mountains in 1813.  They would have passed right past this tree.  Two years later road builder William Cox similarly would have laid his rough track, and in 1836 Major Mitchell upgrading the road too would have passed by this tree.  For nearly two centuries travellers have passed by this tree, most probably not even giving it a glance.   Now it is gone and the opportunity to respect and appreciate this remnant of natural heritage has gone with it.

 

We tried to save you

Campaign to Save Bullaburra’s 300 year old Angophora back in 2008

(Blue Mountains Gazette, 20081203)

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Last January, spiteful people set fire to two Hermmansburg ghost gums made famous in Albert Namatjira’s landscape paintings.  In 2006, Barcaldine’s famous ghost gum, ‘the tree of knowledge’ was poisoned.  Just last week an old gum tree in the Rylstone public school was poisoned.  Human hate for native trees has pervaded Australian colonising society since Cook landed at Camp Cove and chopped down trees for firewood.

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Tree of Knowledge, Barcaldine, Queensland

As it used to be, before it was poisioned.

[Source: Queensland Historical Atlas, 1991,

^http://www.qhatlas.com.au/photograph/tree-knowledge-barcaldine-1991]

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A local arborist with expertise in native trees of the Blue Mountains including Angophoras, estimated in 2007 that the Bullaburra Angophora to have been over 300 years old.  It was still healthy and still growing as confirmed by the solid core of the severed trunk.

Now it lies like a dead harpooned whale like roadkill beside the highway, where it has stood all those decades.

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A dendrochronology of more than 300 annual growth rings.

The tree was healthy to the core.  It was not rotting. It was not diseased.

It was just in the way of someone’s trucking interpretation of ‘progress’.

[Photo by our investigator, 20130403, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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Significant Tree #29

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This Angophora was recognised as a ‘Significant Tree‘ on the local Blue Mountains Council’s Significant Tree Register back on 17th July 1985 and formally adopted on 21st June 1988, at the time of Australia’s Bicentennary.

No opposition against killing the tree was communicated by the Blue Mountains Council to the RTA-come-RMS.  Indeed, this is one of many such ‘significant trees’ that have been killed for development convenience in recent years. Clearly, the Blue Mountains Council’s Significant Tree Register has become disingenuous and lying greenwash.

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Bullaburra’s Angophora, in memoriam

Registered Significant Tree #: 29
Botanical Name: Angophora costata  (Smooth Barked Apple, Red Gum)
Location: Great Western Highway Bullaburra, Opp. Lot 173, DP13407

[Photo by Editor, 20071028, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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Trucking Expressway

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The death of the Angophora is the begining of the end of Bullaburra.  The highway village is set to become a siding for four-laned trucking expressway so that B-double trucks can rumble 24/7 through Blue Mountains towns and villages, nudging 90kph on cruise control.

Bigger Trucks demanding bigger roads

[Photo by Editor, 20090531, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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The rural amenity of this highway village is to be lobotomised into a mono-design urban landscape taking on the same monotonous blandness as any other expressway in the country. The government euphemises this as:

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“to achieve greater consistency in the design of the Blue Mountains area to achieve a simple and unified design of the highway and its elements.”

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The fundamental basis for the government’s conversion of this regional highway into a national trucking expressway route is simply “to improve travel times” for trucks, so that more and larger trucks are encouraged to use the route.

The Bullaburrra section is to cost taxpayers $80 million and will see 3.6 hectares of native bushland destroyed on the basis that the vegetation “is already dissected and fragmented“.  So it seems that moral relativism allows for wedge development just like a little bit of corruption doesn’t hurt anyone.

But as if the twisted morality isn’t bad enough.  It is the greenwashing that really twists the knife in.  The RTA-come-RMS in its Review of Environmental Effects maintains that the expressway development aims:

“to protect the natural systems and ecology of the corridor”

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[Source:  ‘The Great Western Highway Upgrade – Bullaburra East, Review of Environmental Effects’, Vol.2, July 2009, Roads and Traffic Authority, New South Wales Government, p.2.]

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However, the expressway development will simply result in the heart of rural Bullaburra being ripped out and the amenity reduced to a trucking siding adopting a benale concrete landscape akin to the bland urban character of an upper Blaxland, and mirroring what has happened to nearby lobotomised Lawson.

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“It’s just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can’t leave behind something as primitive as government sponsored execution.”

~ Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, when introducing a bill that would end the death penalty on the Federal level.

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Progress of Hate

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Under Australia’s Federal Auslink Policy the national freight thinking is road-centric and all about replacing real trains with road trains.  Behind this trucking expressway scheme is a powerful and influential trucking lobby group who donate generously to the political parties that control the New South Wales Government, and various politicians including retired Blue Mountains MP Bob Debus, who has long been a driver of this trucking expressway.

The New South Wales Government department behind this scheme is the RTA-come-RMS (Roads and Maritime Services).  In 2007, the then General Manager – Environmental Branch, Ms Erica Adamson, claimed that to retain the Angophora consequential loss of tree roots and pruning would instigate the decline of the tree.  “For road construction and safety reasons the tree will have to be removed…to maintain sight lines (for speeding trucks).”

“It’s called progress” they say.  For the Blue Mountains it is being inflicted at any cost – economic, social, environmental.

The idea of ‘progress‘ is an economic one that was borne out of Western 18th Century hard-nosed Industrial Revolution and perhaps extending back to the 16th Century Enlightenment of Europe and perhaps even back to when the Iron Age triumphed so aggressively and effectively over the Bronze Age.

Perhaps progress remains subjective only with the progressor who doggedly in his pursuit rough shods over others in the process.  Perhaps the idea of progress is a myth.  Is the human condition better off as a result?  Are we advancing as a society by rough shodding over others and over what is left of Ecology and Nature?   The philosophy of ‘^Deep Ecology‘ posits otherwise.

Progress of Hate

[Photo by our investigator, 20130403, Photo © ^Creative Commons]

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“Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.  If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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Related reading on this website:

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[1]   >Threats from Road Making – articles

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[2]   >Bushphobia – a case of deluded convenience

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The following article was initially published by Tigerquoll on CanDoBetter.net 20090416 under the title: ‘ACT Environment Commissioner unqualified to condemn kangaroos’:

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One day kangaroos grazing on Australian grasslands (long deforested by colonists)…

Next day, thanks to the ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment….

ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment, Dr Maxine Cooper, is the Australia Capital Territory’s inaugural full-time Commissioner in the role, yet what relevant environmental qualifications and experience does the incumbent have, or indeed lack, to be officially condemning another local indigenous population of Australia’s iconic marsupials, our kangaroos, to slaughter for pet food?

The Environment Commissioner’s own website lists her formal qualifications in the areas of:

• Environmental Planning
• Environmental Design
• Environmental Science

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All these ‘environmentally’ friendly prefixes sound impressive, until one realises that each of these areas of academic study are not fauna focused, but indeed are all about human-centric utilisation of the natural environment for the benefit of humans. That is, these qualifications are all about maximising the convenience of the environment for humans. A wolf in charge of the kangaroos?  It’s just like forestry pretending to care about forests.

Such qualifications offer no insight into the survival and habitat needs of Australian wildlife. “According to ACT’s inaugural Environment Commissioner, kangaroos at Belconnen were a threat to certain vulnerable and endangered species of fauna and flora on the site. Where’s the bloody independent zoological evidence, who would attest to this view under the test of peer scrutiny?

Now if our roo-shooting redneck commissioner had a more relevant Bachelor of Science in Zoology from say the University of Melbourne, she may be of a contrary mindset and less aligned to human planning needs and monetary gains; instead more empathetic to ecological needs of native fauna. The introductory paragraph for the University of Melbourne’s Honours degree in Zoology instills the following focus:
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“How animals live and why they live that way are questions addressed by zoologists. Most of the Australian fauna are poorly understood or not even formally named, yet informed management and resource use of Australia’s flora, fauna and habitats depend upon zoological knowledge. We need to catalogue what species exist and how they survive in their natural environments. This requires knowledge of their physiology, breeding and reproductive systems, ecology, evolution and behaviour.”
[SOURCE: http://www.unimelb.edu.au/HB/areas/SZOOL.html]

Maxine Cooper, where are your qualifications in Zoology, in Conservation and in Australian wildlife to entitle you to officially condemn thousands of Australia’s iconic kangaroos to slaughter for cat and dog food?

Can you guarantee the Australian public that none of these kangaroos is to be minced for cat and dog food?

The standard setting for the job prerequisites for the ACT’s Environment Commissioner are woeful and clearly not in the best interests of the target subject – our natural wildlife. What were they thinking by employing a planner in environmental management?

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Editor’s comment:

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The stated role of the OCSE is to:

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• ‘Investigate complaints about the management of the environment by the Territory or a Territory authority’
• ‘Conducts investigations as directed by the Minister’
• ‘Initiates investigations into actions of an agency where those actions would have a substantial impact on the environment of the ACT’
• ‘Produces state of the environment reports for the ACT and the 17 councils in the Australian Capital Region’
• ‘Makes recommendations for consideration by government and includes in our annual report the outcomes of those recommendations’
• ‘Resolves issues through mediation and conflict resolution’
• ‘Undertakes an advocacy and awareness role on sustainability and environmental issues.’

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[Source: OCSE website, ^http://www.envcomm.act.gov.au/our_office]

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So it basically seems to be an ACT Government environmental watchdog agency.  Why?

The ACT covers only 2400 square kilometres and has under 400,000 people.  It already has an Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate [Read More], which lumps disparate functions under one watered down super-ministry including environment, water, climate change, planning (including development assessment, leasing, construction, land use and utilities regulation, surveying and land information), the Government architect, heritage, transport planning and nature conservation.

So is OCSE the watchdog for one overburdened super-ministry?  It is bureacracy gone mad.  Since Canberra is the seat of the federal government and ACT is so small, why not just have the Federal Government look after ACT conservation matters and be cost effective with taxpapers’ money?

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It is gross deceptive greenwash when the Australian Capital Territory government merges all its conservation responsibility into one super agency, The Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment, (OCSE), then heads it up with a town planner [Read More], then tries to claims that it has custodial responsibility for environment and conservation on behalf of the people of the ACT.  It is wholly consistent with government’s misuse and abuse of the word ‘sustainability‘ ~ to mean any action that sustains the government’s conveniences and political ends, such as land use development of grasslands for industry.  The Office is simply a development planning arm of the ACT Government and many Canberra-based property developers are very happy with the arrangement thank you very much.

But it is the biased leading the inept when one reads a report, ‘Report of the Grassland Forum‘ dated 20 May 2010 on the website of this Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment.

The report considers the future potential of the 10,000 hectares of native grassland just outside Canberra.

This report was not compiled not internally (probably because the OCSE employs not competent environmental scientists to do so), but believe it or not by a property development consulting firm ‘Beaconhill Consulting‘. ‘Beaconhill Consulting’s recent work is listed on its website as:

• Strategic performance review of a major multi-program investment portfolio valued at several hundred million dollars
• Due diligence examination of a multi-million dollar import business investment  – supply chain and market analyses, review of product efficacy and policy framework
• Strategic Business Development for an emerging export business – Board level reforms and strategies, business plan development, commercialisation strategy, marketing plans, industry development application, governance arrangements and commercial partner negotiations
• Business Development, government submissions, marketing plans, and client tenders.

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The ‘Report of the Grassland Forum’ “found that the Eastern Grey Kangaroos are the dominant herbivore in natural grasslands..and that their overgrazing has lead to erosion and loss of plant species“.

It is not surprising that the Maxine Coopper’s office has approved many hundreds of these native kangaroos have been conveniently slaughtered for pet food.  Some nutter has even contrived a myth that these grazing native kangaroos are threatening the survival of a rare native Earless Dragon in the area.  Kangaroos threatening native animals!  That’ a cracker!  The fact that thousands of hectares of these grasslands are planned for bulldozing to make way for industrial and residential development may not threatend the Earless Dragon is not mentioned in the report.

It is laughable to read terms such as ‘diversity‘ and ‘ecology‘ used in the report in the context of industrial development.

The study focused upon Canberra restricted supply and diversity of industrial land. It is considered that Eastern Broadacre will play a critical role in meeting Canberra’s industrial needs in the long term. The study found that possible uses include:

• Freight/ transport and logistics
• Industrial and associated office
• Warehousing/ storage
• Education and training facilities
• Tourism/ recreational uses

‘Belinda explained that the sustainability corridors may have broader considerations, and ACTPLA is keen to explore light industry ecology.’

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[Read Report]

So this is where the tax revenue of the people of Australia’s Capital Territory around Canberra is being spent.  How much did this report cost?  How much did the OCSE logo above cost – took a lot of imagination that one!