Tree Change
High density dwellings
by Andy McLean
I’m constantly surprised by nature. By the variety. By the cleverness and beauty. By the amount of it. It’s everywhere.
I had to walk through my property at four a.m. a couple of weeks back. At a time when I’m normally counting sheep, I began counting the glow-in-the-dark mushrooms. Yes. We have fungi that glow in the dark. So brightly that you can see their blue light from quite a distance. Amazing. It reminded me of a scene from the movie Avatar.
When you take the time to really look, the amount and variety of life is astounding. And so many creatures make their homes right beside eachother, sharing the space in a carefully laid out town-plan, each of them eeking out their own little property.
Take a tree, for example.
You obviously have the birds, who perch on the branches, make their nests on and in the tree, feed from its flowers, fruits, nuts or bark. Then you have the nocturnal animals like possums, gliders and koalas, who munch on the leaves or drink the sap that oozes out of the trunk.
But look further.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of different types of bugs, beetles, spiders, native bees and borers that call the tree home too. And each of these creatures will, at some point, provide food for one or more of the birds, mammals or reptiles you see visiting. And that’s just the animals. There is also an immense collection of other plants that rely on the protection the tree gives to the surrounding land. Fungi (like my glow-in-the-dark friends), ferns, creepers, climbers and epyphitic plants such as staghorns. They all need the tree.
Our unique native gums also provide a very special place for our wildlife to breed. Many of our beloved birds and mammals rely on the hollow branches and trunks of our mature trees to make their nests. But they can only do it in mature trees, which only develop the hollows when they get to about a hundred years old. Without mature gum trees, many of our threatened species will die out. There is no question of that.
And yet, I go for a walk, even a short walk, and I see hundreds of mature trees being cut down. Most of them are taken out to make room for development. But some of them are just hacked out, removed for no good reason.
Many clever people have taken a look around and decided that they had better start planting trees, rather than removing them. And I encourage you all to do the same. Even if it’s only a few trees now and then. It all makes a difference.
And even though the trees that we are thoughfully planting now, will only be of use for hollow-nesting in the next century, they will still provide food for wildlife in the meantime, and oxygen for our children to breathe, as they grow up and start to question our custodianship of the land.
Let’s leave them something good.
A tree change without trees, is just a change.
And not for the better.