My Lamma Forums

[Snake Path]

Over the weekend there were a whole bunch of workers with strimmers cutting down grass all over the hills above Lo Tik Wan. That's the area on the other side of the cableway from the site of the windmill. They seemed to be digging holes for trees too.

Does anyone know what's going on? It could be that HK Electric are "beautifying" the area. But it could be the presage to a new proposal to concrete the Lo Tik Wan to Luk Chau path. They've also put up steel sign posts pointing to Lo Tik Wan along that path. Anyone who objected to the concrete last time should keep their eyes out for another proposal.

[Alan]

Very unusual for any tree planting to be done at all by any official workers, except when trying to pretty up some construction works (like the dead bamboo tress stuck in the ground in front of the pumphouse).

There are a lot of gravesites above Lo Tik, but tree planting is also inconsistent with graves, they like to destroy any vegetation around these.

Possibly it's a way to spend away Lo Tik's allocated construction budget, as the whole village has already had every possible path and public space concreted, not to mention their gigantic, unused, pier. It'd be nice if they were to blow their budget on tree planting; but I remain suspicious of anything going on there.

[Fortune Chan]

They seem to have already dug around the ridge below the trig point and on Sunday were digging on one of the smaller hills near that dumb arse bamboo thingy. It also looks like they may have been an attempt at planting shrubs on the hill above the flat part of power station road, (the one that leads to Tai Ping) the one that offers great views over the village and the E. Lamma channel. When I saw the digging on Sunday, from afar, it looked at first sight like an archaeological dig…

What happen?

[Lamma-Gung]

Just got an email from an Alert Forum Member who's been taking pictures:

[Granola Eater]

Ill see if I can arrange a chopper on short notice.

[Lamma-Gung]

And more pictures from minibeast:

[Fortune Chan]

My God, those “shrubs” are cocaine bushes! I think we have only gone and inadvertently stumbled across a big crime syndicate’s drug farm, like in “The Beach”. Oh, my giddy aunt… so, in the movie, Gung gets to play Leonardo Dicaprio but who’s the sexy French lass? Pinky? And what role will Guy have?

[zep]

Does anybody actually have access to the decision-making bodies about things like tree-planting? I presume somebody makes the decisions, and it would be nice to know who could be lobbied.

Lamma has the potential to be a forest reserve at least as good as Tai Po Kau if a sensible reforestation project was allowed to take place. As it is, most of the plantings are of exotics like Eucalyptus, which have no pests or associated ecosystem and make something of an ecological desert

.

[Alan]

Most of the land on Lamma is in a sort of Limbo, it's government land but not Country Park. Apparently some is declared a "conservation area", but as we've found the authorities are reluctant even to put fires out on the hills unless buildings are threatened, so it's very puzzling who and why they'd plant trees. The water authority might do it in a catchment area, but there aren't any here.
When Bobbsie's crew do a tree planting in their back yard there is always an official notice posted. The use of helicopters indicates this is very official and has a large budget.

[Lamma-Gung]

Yes, helicopters would have been nice during the last public "Tree Planting Day" organised by the ABLE Charity. We had to carry the seedlings by hand to the top of the hill before Pak Kok where the Lamma Forest is located.

Well, ABLE is sleeping for now, only organising occasional forest maintenance last year. I've just emailed HK Electric, the main tree planter on the island, if they're involved.

[Lamma-Gung]

I'm baffled & surprised!

I've just asked Lammadonna about this large-scale, wide-area tree planting. The most powerful woman on Lamma with more than 12 local official posts and she didn't know about it!. I ended up briefing her from what I've learnt from this forum so far!

She promised to find out and call me back tomorrow! And then she gave me a plastic bag full of fruits left over from Lunar New Year, maybe to ease my obvious disappointment about her lack of info on this big project. This is really damaging to her Ms Knows-It-All (if It's on Lamma) reputation!

She said that it might not be HK Electric either and they haven't replied yet to my enquiry. So it might be some govt. dept doing something really positive. But which one? EPD?

The mystery deepens, this is definitely headline, homepage material for the Lamma-zine Blog... Stay tuned!

[Alan]

There were more choppers buzzing around there today.
I'll try to get out there tomorrow.

[Lamma-Gung]

HK Electric has just confirmed that it's not their project.

minibeast, who supplied the great pictures above, sent some more info:

"The workers said not HK Electric either. But they did say "jingfu" (govt). one of the men's hats had the whole name of their organisation on it, but I couldn't read all the characters. I did notice that it said something like 錦 襤 河 (Gam lam ho?).... tree planting division", though. I will have a closer look at the hat next time.

The hills involved are Trig Point and the next one over above the coast path, where the green ugly water box and dead bamboo plantation is.
It's really extensive and they strimmed and pickaxed for two days before the trees came...."

Oz (Mr Kumi) also mentioned on the street that they're still working on it now and it looks like thousands of trees being planted...

[Snake Path]

If Yu Lai Fan knows nothing about it then maybe there will be no concrete after all.

[Lamma-Gung]

Best guess I've heard so far from a 20+-year resident:

"Territory Development Dept.",
renamed now into the Civil Engineering & Development Dept.: www.cedd.gov.hk
(Thanks to Zippy for correcting my typo in the address above)

A pretty little-known dept., it seems.

[Guy MIller]

[Granola Eater]

I think we should all decide individually which kind of trees we insist on being planted, and send the department in question unreasonable demands for rare shrubs as well. It really gets my dander up when trees start getting planted willy-nilly without contacting any of us first.

[Zippy]

www.cedd.gov.hk

[zep]

I don't have any expertise in this area, but there are plenty of people who have. I heard for example about a scheme to re-inintroduce species of birds and mammals to Lantau which were found there before deforestation, supported by planting of indigenous species of trees.

It is easy to see that planting Eucalyptus does not create a real forest ecosystem, even if the individual trees look nice. They do hold the soil together, but in terms of attraction to wildlife, they might as well plant plastic palm trees.

[Alan]

Are they planting eucalyptus then?
Though it might be nice to start a koala colony, Zep' s right that we need natives -- in Australia it's pines that are the alien species; some of the more aggressive greenies have a slogan "Plant Native, DIckhead" they are likely to deface places planting foreign vegetation.