Louise Costa continues decades-long fight to preserve trees

“And there's hardly any hollows in it.

“What are the animals going to do if we cut that down? They need hollows to survive . . . that's their home.”

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For the past 25 years, the landscape architect has fought to preserve the dwindling number of trees in the Goulburn Valley, by drawing on her work in environmental planning.

“When I have a space that needs working on, I look down on it to see what's existing in the landscape and work around it,” she said.

“It's become the way I see the world . . . from above.”

Five years ago, Ms Costa was instrumental in a roadside tree campaign opposing VicRoads works in Rushworth.

“There was no community consultation,” she said.

“They just came along, put marks on the trees, and before we knew it they were here to chop them down.

“I saw red, a few other people in town saw red.”

When the workers turned up with chainsaws at 7 am on a chilly May morning, Ms Costa rang a dozen of her friends, who rushed out to meet them on the side of the road.

After nine months of negotiation drawing up a plan to redesign the roadside, 60 per cent of the 120 trees were saved.

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“It was a massive win for the community to be able to be involved in the conversation,” Ms Costa said.

“The fire in my belly is community consultation — we don't have it.

“It's not instilled in our processes at any level of government.”

The latest Victorian State of the Environment report, released in 2019, examined 170 indicators of environmental conditions.

It found 30 per cent of indicators were deteriorating, and just 10 per cent had showed an improving condition.

Of the 170 indicators, 37 per cent were ‘fair’, 52 per cent were ‘poor’ or ‘unknown’, and only 11 per cent were listed as ‘good'.

Ms Costa's 16-hectare property is part of a conservation covenant — to protect the eucalypts and gums stretching back behind her property.

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But as former president of the Goulburn Valley Environment Group, she said the statistics hit close to home.

“I've seen thousands of trees chopped down in my time,” she said.

“We're in the most cleared state in Australia in the most cleared region in the state.”

Today, only 30 per cent of pre-European plant coverage remains in the Goulburn Broken Catchment.

In the Victorian Riverina bioregion, that figure is just three per cent, cleared out for agricultural development and timber supply.

The figures cause Ms Costa to despair, but she has had some major wins.

A roadside campaign she co-ordinated along Shepparton's Goulburn Valley Hwy saved 249 out of 250 trees scheduled for demolition, and Ms Costa was instrumental in the historic decision to preserve Barmah Forest as a national park.

“It was declared a national park after 10 years . . . when you've experienced a success like that it inspires you to keep going,” she said.

But she described the state of the environment in Victoria today as one of "managed decline".

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“That's where government's at — they know what's happening, they've got the information, but . . . in the meantime, VicRoads is still cutting down entire ecosystems,” she said.

“All I see is justification of development.”

The Goulburn Broken Catchment is home to 493 species of native vertebrate fauna — a significant portion of the nation's biodiversity.

But habitat loss, invasive species, land clearing and climate change has placed 110 of these species under threat of extinction in Victoria, and 17 at a national level.

To Ms Costa, progress does not have to cause habitat loss.

“In that four years (campaigning in Shepparton), there was such a shift in VicRoads’ understanding of creating roads that aren't just safer, but maintaining the integrity of the roadside as well,” she said.

“You can have both if you're working together and bringing the community into it.”

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Nowadays, Ms Costa has set her sights on the campaign to preserve 51 grey box woodland trees at a Nagambie lifestyle village, and offered alternative layouts to maintain environmental cover.

“They could choose land that's clear already, just across the road,” she said.

“Or they could design a village that is totally ecologically sensitive to those trees.

“There's solutions there . . . you've just got to be constructive. You don't just clean the slate and start again; if you've got these amazing things, you work around them.”

When Ms Costa thinks of Rushworth, it's as an ecotone — the intermingling of two ecosystems, where the ironbark forest meets the grey box woodlands.

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Driving into town, the landscape moves from flat terrain to low hills, packed with quartz and stone.

“That's what's been lost, because all of the soil types under the woodland are suitable for farming . . . we've lost those spaces where different species interconnect,” Ms Costa said.

“We're losing what is left of the species that are out there, that need our help.

“People spend time in the bush because it frees them, it frees that weight they have every day. Because nature doesn't judge. It just accepts.”

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