War memorial trees in regional Victorian town felled
Trees which were planted more than 100 years ago as a war memorial in a regional Victorian town are today being felled.
A “mini-cyclone” in Mortlake earlier this year caused extensive damage to some of the trees on the Avenue of Honour.
It comes on top of a fungal disease which forced the removal of many of the trees in 2020.
Mayor of Moyne Shire, Councillor Ian Smith, says the trees being removed this morning are high risk.
“We’ve had an arborist in assessing them,” he told Ross and Russel.
But the trees, which are macrocarpa cypress, won’t be replaced with trees of the same species.
“There’s been a lot of problems through the western plains with a fungus getting into the trees and killing them, so the ideal situation would be replacing them like for like but this wasn’t feasible,” Councillor Smith said.
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