by Shane Sody

In coming days, there will be occasions to reflect and give thanks for the handful of urban forests in your Open, Green, Public Adelaide Park Lands.

Next week, Thursday 21 March will be observed world-wide to celebrate and raise awareness of the importance of all types of forests. It’s the United Nations International Day of Forests.

You might think of your Park Lands as sporting fields, open-air event spaces like Elder Park, or as beautiful landscaped areas like the Himeji Japanese gardens or Veale Gardens.

However some small parts of your Park Lands have been lovingly re-vegetated, as the lungs of the city - priceless urban forests.

Each of the pockets of urban forest in your Park Lands has different characteristics. Some parts have been re-vegetated with native species, to try to mimic the sort of vegetation that was on the Adelaide plain before European settlement.

Other forests are devoted to a single species of non-native tree; such as European olives, or English elms.

The International Day of Forests is also a reminder that the urban forests of your Adelaide Park Lands have no effective legal protection, and that their biggest ongoing threats continually seem to come from successive State Government administrations.

For example, this mini-forest of about 50 olives and she-oak trees in Kate Cocks Park is destined for imminent destruction, to make way for an eight-storey car park, part of the new Women's and Children's Hospital.