by Shane Sody

It’s been more than three years since Adelaide was declared a “National Park City” but a report celebrating that milestone has omitted any reference to the State Government’s three years of repeated attacks on your Park Lands.

State Government agency “Green Adelaide” is justifiably proud of environmental improvements in other parts of the metropolitan area.

However, because it IS a Government agency, it tends to stay silent when other Government agencies mercilessly chop down hundreds of your Park Lands trees.

*Green Adelaide’s report on the first three years of Adelaide as a ‘National Park City’* ***(PDF, 80 pages, 47 Mb)***.

Nor does Green Adelaide speak up when the State Government promotes carbon emission motor racing, that keeps parts of your Park Lands fenced off for months.

For years, your Park Lands have suffered from State Government inaction on any protection measures, despite their world-unique status.

So it would seem that your Park Lands are not considered worthy of protection - not even relevant to the label “National Park City”.

That’s why we have the jarring incongruity of Green Adelaide’s 80-page glossy document (PDF, 47 Mb) that celebrates multiple successes elsewhere in Adelaide, that fails to mention any of the Park Lands destruction, documented below.

The olive and sheoak forest destroyed in May 2024

This entire mini-urban forest (about 50 she-oaks and 160-year old olive trees) was removed in May 2024 to make way for an eight-storey car park alongside the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital being built now, in your Park 27.

Kate Cocks Park (outlined in yellow) before the destruction. Pic: Google Earth

Kate Cocks Park (outlined in yellow) after the destruction. Pic: Anna Hacket.

*All that was left on Sunday 12 May 2024, of a huge 160-year-old carob tree that stood off Port Road, outside the former Road Safety Centre in Bonython Park. Inset: the destroyed tree.*

Over the past 14 months, hundreds of your Park Lands trees have been felled, because the State Government has refused to consider brownfield sites for needed new infrastructure.

*Tree protection? Do as we say, not as we do!*

A few months earlier, in November 2023, the State Government decided to ignore more than 8,000 signatures on a petition, and employed contractors to bring their chainsaws to Denise Norton Park /Pardipardinyilla (Park 2).

The waves of Park Lands destruction began soon after the State election in March 2022, and has continued since then, with only one proposed attack (in Golden Wattle Park /Mirnu Wirra, Park 21 West) that was averted after two public rallies of Park Lands support, to protect the biodiversity in that Park.