Dead Trees, Deadwood and Standing Stags on Wollondilly Blocks

Standing dead timber is normal country here — until it is near something

Drive the back roads out of Buxton and Bargo, or along the edges of Thirlmere Lakes National Park, and you will see a lot of standing dead stems. Some are drought casualties from the dry years. Some are the tail end of the 2019-20 Green Wattle Creek fire, which burned through this part of the shire and left stringybark and ironbark that held on for a season or two and then quietly gave up. On bushland-boundary blocks around Yanderra and Couridjah the same pattern shows up in the back paddock.

Most of it is harmless. Standing dead timber is part of how this landscape works. The problem is only ever about location: a dead grey gum a hundred metres out in the paddock is habitat, and the identical tree twelve metres from the house is a bill waiting to happen.

First, work out whether it is actually dead

Eucalypts are theatrical about drought. They drop a crown, look terminal for a full summer, and then flush epicormic growth straight out of the trunk when the rain finally arrives. Plenty of landholders across the shire have paid to remove trees that would have come back.

Before you commit:

• Scratch test the bark on a small branch and on the trunk. Green and moist underneath means live tissue. Dry, brown and papery means that section is gone.
• Look for epicormic shoots — the fuzzy growth pushing directly out of the trunk and major limbs. That is the tree rebuilding. It is a good sign, even if the original crown never returns.
• Snap a fine twig. Live wood bends and tears. Dead wood breaks clean.
• Check the base. Fungal brackets on the buttress roots or at the collar are a decay signal that matters more than the state of the crown.
• Give it one wet season. If there is no response anywhere after decent rain, you have your answer.

Post-fire trees are their own case. A stem can carry a live crown for two or three years while the cambium under a deep fire scar is quietly failing, and the failure, when it comes, is at the scar. Those are worth having looked at rather than guessed at.

Where Council sits on it

Wollondilly Shire Council's position, as published on its tree management pages, is that a permit or approval is not required to remove a tree that is dead or dying if Council is satisfied that the tree is dead or dying, and provided it is not native animal habitat (Wollondilly Shire Council — trees on private property).

Read that carefully, because two conditions are doing a lot of work:

1. "If Council is satisfied." That is Council's judgement, not yours and not a contractor's. Photograph the tree before it comes down. Where the removal is on hazard grounds, Council indicates that documentation of the danger may need to be provided.
2. "Not native animal habitat." Hollows change the assessment. So can threatened species, endangered ecological communities, environmental protection zoning, slopes over 15 degrees and watercourses — all of which appear on Council's own list of circumstances where approval is required.

Where an approval is needed, it goes through Council's Tree Management Application — a Tier 1 form for up to five trees or 100 square metres of vegetation, Tier 2 for up to ten trees or more than 100 square metres, with permits valid twelve months from issue (Wollondilly Shire Council — tree management application). Rural clearing can also fall under the Local Land Services Act 2013 rather than Council's process.

Rules change. Ring Council on (02) 4677 1100 and confirm before anyone starts cutting. If this page and Council disagree, Council is right.

Deadwood inside a living crown

Not every job is a whole tree. Mature angophoras, ironbarks and turpentines routinely carry dead limbs in an otherwise healthy crown — the tree sheds its own lower branches as it grows and does not always let go of them promptly.

Deadwooding is the selective removal of that material and it is worth doing where the crown sits over:

• the house roof, the verandah or a rainwater tank;
• a driveway, a carport or where cars are parked;
• stock yards, a round yard, or shade where horses stand;
• a pool, a fire pit, or anywhere people sit.

It is comparatively light work with a good return. The tree keeps its live structure and you remove the pieces most likely to come down in a westerly. Where the crown also needs its overall size managed, that becomes tree lopping rather than deadwooding.

The fuel-load angle, kept practical

Dead standing timber and accumulated deadwood are fuel, and on a bushland boundary that is a straightforward practical consideration rather than a scare story. Clearing dead material and overhanging limbs from close to buildings is ordinary property maintenance in this shire and it is part of what is covered under bushfire hazard reduction.

What nobody can do is tell you your property is safe, issue you an approval, or certify anything. Asset Protection Zone requirements and the 10/50 Vegetation Clearing scheme are administered by the NSW Rural Fire Service, and 10/50 only applies if your address falls inside a mapped entitlement area on the day you clear — check your own address on the RFS 10/50 tool rather than assuming. For anything else, talk to Council and the RFS.

Taking a dead tree down is not easier than taking a live one down

It is harder, and the price sometimes surprises people who assume dead means light.

Dead timber has lost its fibre strength. A limb that would flex under a climber's weight when green will snap without warning. Decayed trunks do not hinge predictably when they are cut, so a straight fell can go somewhere nobody planned. Bark sheets off in slabs onto whoever is below. A hollow stem gives no reliable rigging point at all.

Which is why dead stems are often dismantled from an elevated work platform rather than climbed, or dropped in one controlled piece where there is room, or taken down with machinery holding the stem. On acreage there is frequently space to do the simple thing safely — which is one of the few advantages of a big block.

Related: large and dangerous tree removal for the tall ones, storm damage response when a dead limb has already come down, and stump grinding to finish the ground off.

Covered across Picton, Tahmoor, Bargo, Buxton, Appin, The Oaks and the rest of the shire — see areas serviced, or head back to the home page.

Call (02) 4601 3180 to have a dead or suspect tree looked at, and we will connect you with a local crew who will tell you honestly whether it needs to go at all.