Community Service - Aleppo Pine Removal

Day 10 17Th March

Today we went around to the Minlaton park lands to help with the removal of Aleppo pines. Aleppo pines are a introduced species which has become a pest making it a weed. Aleppo pines spread very easily and if they are not cut off close to the roots then they will grow again. Aleppo pines mature in five years and then they can spread seeds to make more. However the real problem that the Aleppo pines present is that they drain the nutrients from other plants around them. I used the wood lopper for most of the time to cut down the younger Aleppo's. Saws were used for the larger ones and we were told to use our hands to pull the smallest ones out. the adults in the area helped by cutting down the fully fledged trees with chainsaws. In total we ended up removing over three-hundred Aleppo pines among the eleven of us. That means that we were removing at least two Aleppo pines every minute. Around halfway through the first half of the pine removal i had to use my hands to move the fallen trees to piles. This was when i learnt an interesting defense mechanism the pines have to prevent themselves being destroyed. The small green straw-leaves they have covering them conceal small splinters of wood which embed themselves inside the skin of any animal that gets too close. Unfortunately i found this out the hard way and by the time that we had finished the Aleppo pine removal my hands had as many holes in them as the ground did. Looking back on our work there the loss of green makes it almost seem like a bad thing but when i think about how its going to look in five or so years it reminds me about how much good were doing for the environment. I'd like to say to anyone out there reading this blog to help out with the removal of the Aleppo pines and to be very careful when walking around them to avoid getting scraped by them.