Sydney's mass tree vandalism
“This is happening all over the country, all of the time."
"A disjunct between weak punishment and the crime, a colonial-settler impulse to control native bush, an overriding sense, perhaps, that public property has less value than private – impels them, regardless, to vandalise majestic trees."
"The novelist and celebrated nature writer James Bradley says the “hatred of trees” is a settler-colonial legacy of the desire to impose order on the natural landscape and a symptom of increased alienation from nature."
“Trees have helped shape and sustain human cultures for hundreds of thousands of years. Many Indigenous cultures recognise this with systems of reciprocity that connect them to trees, within which trees are not just living beings, but actually relatives or kin. That connection has been disrupted by the processes of extraction that have seen most of the world’s forests cleared, and the hostility to trees you hear when people complain about their messiness, or them blocking their view."
“The more science learns about trees, the more we realise that even though they exist upon quite different timescales to humans, they are beings, with the ability to communicate and learn. And that they aren’t just good for the environment, they’re good for us, and just being around them makes us calmer, improves our mood, and makes us feel more connected to the world around us.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2023/dec/10/tree-vandalism-australia-why-removals
James Bradley
https://cityoftongues.com/about/
#HarbourViews #PropertyValues #Sydney #views #LaneCove #CastleCove #crime #entitlement #SettlerSociety #legacy #BotanicalColonisation #LoggingIndustry #values #extractivism #reciprocity #NativeForests #biodiversity #wildlife #TheBush
