Inexplicable removal of our city’s trees

I’VE JUST read today’s opinion piece “Why does no one care about trees in Toowoomba?”

I’m not familiar with the Ghost Gums referred to, nor whether they were on private or public land. However, the article reminded me of various instances over the decades of seemingly inexplicable removal of Toowoomba trees.

An example from the 70s was the removal of a large tree during road works at the intersection of Kitchener and Margaret Sts. The reason given at the time was that it was a dangerous visual obstruction to traffic. Nevertheless, there are now an increasing number of Toowoomba roundabouts with trees growing in their middle.

We have the present example of the tree removal proposed by the TRC in Highfields to which residents are opposed. As I understand it, the proposal is to remove established trees from land given to the council in the expectation that it would be preserved in perpetuity, and substitute some smaller trees in the centre of the road.

The small trees in the middle of Ruthven St in the CBD and near the Bernoth Centre have developed well and are providing a much-needed feeling of leafiness in the midst of bitumen hot-spots. The notion is good, but ...

Two questions to which answers for Toowoomba residents are appropriate are these:

• How are we to know when the experts are correct in relation to tree removal? and

• Does the council and its planners consider that less is more in relation to trees?

We might hope that there has been a generational change in the thinking of traffic management experts. The era in which trees were seen as nuisances to be removed is gone; greenery and leafiness have defined Toowoomba, the Garden City, for a century.

My father remembered the planting of street trees when he was a child in the 1920s and 30s. Many of Toowoomba’s trees must be in the latter stages of their life and will need replacing in the coming decades. The choices of replacements will need to be horticulturally and socially considerate, but it is eminently do-able.

The increasing housing density in Toowoomba is working against the continuation of Toowoomba’s leafy environment on private land. It is to be hoped that the council can compensate for that by increasing tree planting in public places. It is to be hoped that the council extends to the many other parks around town the excellent state of Queen’s and Laurel Bank Parks, the CBD streets and Picnic Point.

I’ve never seen so much construction in and around Toowoomba in my lifetime, and it’s a generational opportunity that Toowoomba had to make the most of.

It’s great to see, and it’s to be hoped that the council gives as much importance (and commensurate resources) to those aspects of the natural environment that have made Toowoomba what it is - The Garden City. — DR ROBERT WHITE, Toowoomba