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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Environment
Penry Buckley

Stolen views, shipping containers and ‘shame signs’: do Australia’s tree wars need a new solution?

A banner strung up in bush reads ‘Trees should not die for a view’
Willoughby council in Sydney identified suspects but couldn’t prove who killed about 250 trees in Castle Cove in 2023. This banner was the best it could do to penalise the unknown offender. Photograph: Willoughby Council

After trees along Sydney’s Brighton-Le-Sands beach were hacked down and poisoned by unknown hands in January to open up the view, the local government responded in kind.

Bayside council, home to the industrial precinct around Port Botany, dropped a battered metal shipping container in front of the newly created view, and commissioned a local artist to decorate it with a mural of fairy wrens and native flora. It will remain there until replacement trees have grown, says the mayor, Edward McDougall.

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