In Tasmania it used to be about 18 to 20. Currently in Alice Springs each person on average uses about 70 buckets of water a day – more than twice as much as most Australians. I discussed all that here https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/2611/reading-the-waters/
It was with great interest, and some distress, that I read Elsa de Ruyter’s letter regarding the conservation of water in Tasmania. Yes, Tasmania is likely to have a ‘water problem’ but the evidence for “willows” being “super thirsty” water wasters is just not there.
Ms de Ruyter, and readers, might like to consider just how much water, by comparison, willow trees take up by comparison with say towering river edge eucalypts, wattles groves, tee-trees etc. indeed any river edge plants, collectively or singularly.
While they might ‘take up’ water from a waterway it is just not being wasted.
The apparent assumption that this water might be ‘lost’ or ‘wasted’ is a quaint idea to say the very least. All plants expire the water they take up and return it to the water-cycle where, typically, it eventually finds its way back to earth as rain. It’s never lost or wasted!
So far as willows as a species is concerned, there are very good arguments for these trees being taken off the weeds list.
In New Zealand there is a “Poplar & Willow Research Trust” that promotes the roles these plants have in their landscape and s far, far from promoting their irradiation.
Imagining Tasmania’s willow as illegal noxious weeds and as ‘water wasters’ is just silly. Its time for a reality check and a good look at what New Zealand is doing and why!
TA
ReplyDeleteDo they know how much water a gum tree can drink.
And
How many buckets for each human.
In Tasmania it used to be about 18 to 20. Currently in Alice Springs each
ReplyDeleteperson on average uses about 70 buckets of water a day – more than twice as much as most Australians. I discussed all that here https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/2611/reading-the-waters/
It was with great interest, and some distress, that I read Elsa de Ruyter’s letter regarding the conservation of water in Tasmania. Yes, Tasmania is likely to have a ‘water problem’ but the evidence for “willows” being “super thirsty” water wasters is just not there.
ReplyDeleteMs de Ruyter, and readers, might like to consider just how much water, by comparison, willow trees take up by comparison with say towering river edge eucalypts, wattles groves, tee-trees etc. indeed any river edge plants, collectively or singularly.
While they might ‘take up’ water from a waterway it is just not being wasted.
The apparent assumption that this water might be ‘lost’ or ‘wasted’ is a quaint idea to say the very least. All plants expire the water they take up and return it to the water-cycle where, typically, it eventually finds its way back to earth as rain. It’s never lost or wasted!
So far as willows as a species is concerned, there are very good arguments for these trees being taken off the weeds list.
In New Zealand there is a “Poplar & Willow Research Trust” that promotes the roles these plants have in their landscape and s far, far from promoting their irradiation.
Imagining Tasmania’s willow as illegal noxious weeds and as ‘water wasters’ is just silly. Its time for a reality check and a good look at what New Zealand is doing and why!
Ray Norman, Trevallyn