Developers are “arborist-shopping”, so they can get on with tree chopping

Across the North Shore, illegal removal and poisoning of trees in recent years has been rampant. In the last year alone, Ku-ring-gai Council has investigated 717 alleged breaches relating to trees, including illegal removal and suspected poisonings.

While the state government has begun to move on illegal clearing — proposing increased fines and penalties — local arborists claim that legal loopholes pose an equally significant risk to trees.

Disappearing trees: In the last decade, the LGAs of Ku-ring-gai and Hornsby have seen significant losses to their overall tree canopy. The tree canopy of an area is measured via aerial imagery, and does not include national parks. 

Urban planners have suggested that even with state governments tipping millions of dollars into tree planting programs, losses occurring on private property will contribute to an overall decline.

Professor of Urban Planning, Sebastian Pfautsch told the Lorikeet in September last year that state government policies aimed at supporting development were having the unintended effect of incentivising the removal of trees.

In NSW, consent to remove trees as part of a development application (DA) is often granted by a local council. However the state government can become the approving body for a DA if it is deemed a State Significant Development. 

Typically, an arborist report will be required to justify why a tree should be cut down.

One local arborist, speaking to the Lorikeet on the condition of anonymity, said that in their experience developers often pressured arborists into writing “factless statements” in order to “obtain approval where approval is not deserving". 

If a tree is deemed to hold an “unacceptable level of risk” to people or property, it may be removed.

The arborist also claimed developers would engage multiple arborists at once, shopping around for a report that would allow them to clear healthy trees and proceed with the development.

They claimed that DAs under the remit of councils that included tree removal were more intensely scrutinised than those adjudicated by the state.

Ku-ring-gai arborist Mark Hartley said that when DAs are subject to state approval, “things get missed, skipped or ignored”.

In September last year, Ku-ring-gai councillor Matt Devlin told the Lorikeet he had seen many cases where a DA was rejected by council, only for the developer to try and take the matter to the state to achieve a different outcome.

Both arborists said the industry needed to be properly regulated.

Industry leader: David Greenwood, CEO of Arboriculture Australia, the peak industry body for arborists, told the Lorikeet that while arborists are “expected to operate with professional integrity and provide objective advice … arboriculture remains largely unregulated across Australia, which can lead to inconsistencies in practice and public understanding”.

Green coverage: The amount of tree canopy lost in recent years varies according to different sources. While Ku-ring-gai Council documents pointed to a 1.4 percent decrease between 2020 and 2022, data compiled for the state government suggested it was closer to eight percent. 

Why it matters: Growing and maintaining strong tree canopy coverage in urban and suburban areas is crucial to preventing the urban heat island effect. 

• This is when materials like concrete and asphalt absorb and radiate the sun’s rays, generating sweltering microclimates in our suburbs. 

The impact of trees in preventing this will become more significant as the effects of climate change intensify urban heat.