Mayors say 'gag orders' on shot-hole borer infected trees should be abolished

The fight against shot-hole-borer is being hampered by the use of NDAs hiding the location of infected trees, two Perth mayors say.

Transcript

00:00In the country's most barren urban canopy, the fight to kill the invasive tree-killing

00:08pest, shot hole borer, continues.

00:13But those most desperate to know exactly where the beetle is in their community are being

00:18sworn to secrecy.

00:20The town of Victoria Park has refused to sign the non-disclosure agreement.

00:24City of Vincent has signed that agreement.

00:26We've signed it because we're desperate to get the information.

00:29It's clearly outlined in the Department of Primary Industries' biosecurity response plan

00:34that local governments will enter NDAs to locate infested trees on private land.

00:41DPIRD says it's standard practice to protect the privacy of residents, but local councils

00:47say it's hindering their response.

00:49We're not going to go and broadcast the names and addresses of private properties where

00:53the borer has been detected.

00:55We do have enough mechanisms in place to deal with that.

00:58Local councils need to have that level of specificity because we need to be able to

01:05work with our communities to make sure that they are also looking out for signs of borer

01:10in immediate vicinities.

01:11Meanwhile, the real impact of the borer on Perth's urban tree canopy is unknown.

01:17The data revealing the percentage of land covered by tree canopy, which is usually published

01:22every two years, hasn't been seen since 2020.

01:26And since then, we've been hit with a shothole borer and continued losses, and you would

01:31have to think that if the numbers were good and going up, they would have been released.

01:35WA Labor has promised to plant one million trees in the metro area over the next decade.

01:41But the borer has already taken more than 4,000 out of that equation.

01:46If we don't know where we are now, we can't set the path forward because we can't manage

01:51what we don't measure.

01:52The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage says the tree canopy data is expected to be

01:57released this year.