Remains of Crown Collapsed Archontophoenix cunninghamiana - Bangalow Palm Removal, 16th April 2020

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Since the crippling drought of 2019 it has become necessary to bring down around 50% of our planted Bangalow Palms. Sadly this amounts to about 100 advanced palm trees, many grown from seed and planted more than 20 years ago.
This action was due to the palms becoming so weak from lack of water during the drought  that the weight of the fronds at the top caused the crownshaft to drop over. Once this happens and the centre frond is broken the palm cannot survive, although the green fronds may hang on for months before the whole head of the palm drops to the ground. 

With Level 4 water restriction in place during the spring and summer of 2019 and with huge potential for bushfire in the landscape we needed to remove some of the fire hazard quickly. We took 3 stacked trailer loads of Bangalow Palm Tunks and fronds to the dump, and that barely touched the surface of the problem as far as the number of palms we were dealing with.
 We had not only been dealing with Bangalow Palms. Our property Raintrees Native and Rainforest Gardens, holds perhaps the largest endemic stand of Livistona australis in the area immediately north of Tuncurry. While just a few Cabbage Palms died most began to drop fronds and were reduced in many cases to just a centre frond before the drought broke on February 8th 2020. 
Cleaning them up has been a spiky and difficult ongoing project and to that end although we have never previously lit a fire heap fire on our property in 25 years we decided it was essential to burn the fronds as a way of containing our fire risk into the coming summer. 

 In early April 2020 we began attacking the problem of the remaining dead Bangalows and started the process of removing them and burning what we could so as to reduce the fire risk for the coming summer.
Its been a time consuming and sometimes physical and dangerous job getting them down without breaking smaller planted rainforests trees growing under them, not to mention the danger to ourselves.
As of the 16th April 2020, with the help of a friend, I was able to bring down the last 10 palms. All were in the range of 12-18 metres tall so dropping them safely was a bit of a lottery.
Fortunately all went to plan ecxept the last tall palm which ended up crashing down across one of our wooden bridges causing minor damage. That can be fixed so is not a problem.
Sometimes trees just don't want to come down where you want them to. In this case though it was my poor choice of saw cut that caused the problem.
Another friend called around just yesterday and while of course social distancing due to Covid 19 restrictions, he offered to assist me get a few more larger dead trees down and we'll attack that job later today however, he also offered to take all my dead fronds, as long as we can get them stacked at a convenient point where they can be picked up in a trailer.
This is a god send for us and hopefully he can put the palm fronds to good use in his own rainforest arboretum, just 3 years old and needing all the organic material he can lay his hands on. 
For the last 25 years thats exactly what I have been doing but with increased risk of drought and bushfires I am no longer prepared to carry so much fuel on our property. 
His property is arguably much less at risk of wildfire than ours so he is prepared to take the risk and he is welcome to take as much as he wants.


   

Taken in: Australia / New South Wales / Diamond Beach (show map)

Taken on: April 16, 2020

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Archontophoenix

Archontophoenix cunnnghamiana

Livistona australis

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Dead Bangalow Palms

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Raintrees Native and Rainforest Gardens

Diamond Beach

Mid North Coast

NSW

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Chainsaw work

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Bangalow Creek

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Sets appears in: • Album 3 of 4 - Mid North Coast, NSW, Australia • Raintrees Native and Rainforest Gardens

Groups appears in: • Beautiful Great Lakes, Manning & Gloucester Regions of NSW

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