Greetings
Please if someone knows what is the land area of Lamma (approx.)??
CLP claims to have planted 70,000 trees on the island......eeeeeeeehhhhhhh????
How many of those trees are still alive?
Is there anyone involved who has a clue about forest management?
Have Ecosystems been identified and species selection reflected this knowledge?
Wholesale planting of inappropriate non native species is risky at best and must be followed up by serious management of the forested area.Best would be to later plant a MUCH more diverse range of species that would take over from the non native"pioneer" plants,even cutting down the acacia,eucalypts etc once an area has some cover .
But perhaps the brother of the guy at CLP who has a nursery in China growing low quality ,quick growing CRAP just couldn't give a *(&*.......because every year, between the Civil Engineering Department and CLP, this guy is A++ happy.
I'm barking up the wrong tree again people............
All of those volunteers would do much more good by being ready to fight hill fires during the two festivals..................... Nature would then take its course and natural forests would grow with minimal help from us.


But when the effects of Peak Oil really start to kick in we got the trees to burn as fuel......right?(or does CLP own them?)


Peace
JJ

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"Iz more fun when u pran,pran,pran....
Pran your trip to Hong Kong Diksleylan"

Just found out Lamma is 13.55 square km.
70,000 divided by 13.55=5166 trees per square km
That's a staggering 5 trees per square metre.
And that is calculating the Total land area.....take out the built up areas and the existing forested areas.........WOW........what alot of trees!!!!!!????

_________________
"Iz more fun when u pran,pran,pran....
Pran your trip to Hong Kong Diksleylan"

Are you sure it's CLP?

Well, CLP has never planted any trees on Lamma, as a far as I know.
HK Electric has planted at least 70,000 and is just planting 2,000 more as part of their Green Lamma Green campaign.

But the HK govt. has recently planted 144,000 trees in a single operation in the hills beyond the windmill last year, between Luk Chau and Hung Shing Yeh beach, part of their landslip prevention measures. The hills are still bare, we need a lot more trees on Lamma, several millions at least...

1sq km = 1 million sq metres. 1 km = 1,000 metres. Square it: 1,000 * 1,000 = 1 million.

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Hey
I was having a bad morning.........too many local vegetables i guess?
Thanku for correcting my maths and apologies to CLP...............despite my obvious mistakes i am still strongly of the view that "shoddiness" is the dominant feature of much of the planting schemes,not from the good people who volunteer to plant trees but from the "organisations" who plan these schemes with more than one intention.
Take a walk around the Peak/Pok Fu lam or Tai Tam hills and it can be seen that the range of trees planted after the 2nd WW and probably into the seventies was much broader than now and the maturing trees are now really stunningly beautiful.......In flower now are Castonopsis Fissa,Machilus thurnbergii and coming up soon the Litsea species.All are native and will grow to large tropical(sub-tropical) forest trees.The associated fauna also benefitted .
The non native trees not only have no resources for local fauna to thrive but some actually harm the habitats.As i have talked about in previous posts,these same trees are being listed as Health hazards/environmental disasters in other countries and i feel that we, being so rich and able to access current international expertise, should be doing a better job.
I have planted trees in HK since i was a lad(20 years already) and ,excluding the use of trees used to stabilise slopes,i can say that "careful" planting of the right tree can have much greater effect than mass planting of "kaka".
Hong Kong's forests represent the very last of what once covered Southern China and even we have many unique species,which is why we hope that more care can be taken.
If anything is gleaned from my ranting it is ......DIVERSITY,DIVERSITY,DIVERSITY


Peace
JJ
PS What happened to that Stick insect man,he still around?
[/u]

_________________
"Iz more fun when u pran,pran,pran....
Pran your trip to Hong Kong Diksleylan"

I think you are quite right - a cynic might sat that the main motivation for planting trees seems to be "look at us, friends of the environment, planting trees and all that green stuff."

There may be reasons why Eucalypts etc are good - they grow fast, they are resistant to diseases and pests, they provide ground cover, they look nice etc, but as has been pointed out several times before, here they grow into what is virtually an ecological desert.

It would indeed be nice to have some representation by ecologically-savvy personnel on the decision-making bodies that occasionally feel inclined to engage in mass tree-planting. The usual story - many people potentially interested are fully stretched by the HK work ratrace.

Hey
Yea....even more frustrating i think because i have learned so much about plants and trees from local"old timers" who have a really unique knowledge of the uses of many plants as food,medicine and other trees for fuels,oils spices etc.......Camphor,Incense,Tung Oil,Mulberry,rosewood,soap berry and on and on and on.Trees that might not necessarily be "native" but are regionally common and have been used for so long as important resources.Without Mulberry there could be no silk,without Bamboos ????? and so on.
To be able to walk through a forest and recognise many useful and, up to recently, reliable well utilised plants for humans is surely a noble aim.It is not only nature but a vital part of our cultural histories.
Living through mono culture trees from Australia has no significance for a Human or animal(save the koala etc) as an integral part of nature.
Knowledge of nature that has been accumulated over many ,many generations only takes a gap of one generation and it will all leave us desperately unable to use our resources in the future ,when it comes to dealing with our position on earth.


Since Mars recently came so close have we witnessed time reversing its flow?


Peace
JJ

_________________
"Iz more fun when u pran,pran,pran....
Pran your trip to Hong Kong Diksleylan"

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt"

Bertrand Russell

_________________
"Iz more fun when u pran,pran,pran....
Pran your trip to Hong Kong Diksleylan"

CLP will plant 30,000 trees in a HK country park, not Lamma, it says.

At maturity, this many trees will remove around 170 tonnes of CO2 per year from the atmosphere.

CLP's Castle Peak power plant stacks will emit this much CO2 in five minutes.

Hong Kong's population will exhale this much CO2 in 38 seconds.

But the trees will look very pretty, and clean the air around the country park, presuming CLP has hired the eight or nine forestry workers 30,000 trees will need to care for them.

Which I'm sure it has.