Ipswich Council has rejected protection for mature city trees

The Ipswich community is devastated by Ipswich City Council’s rejection of the Ipswich Community Action Group’s (ICAG) application for a Vegetation Protection Order (VPO) to protect the significant trees at Darcy Doyle Park.

Council says the application cannot be processed because the trees are part of a “current design process” that began before the VPO application. Council appears to be treating this design process as the “risk” or “threat” referred to in its vegetation protection policy.

ICAG believes this reasoning is flimsy and difficult to reconcile with Council’s own published policy.

Council’s website says significant trees should receive “due and prior attention” before a risk or threat emerges. It does not clearly say that a design process prevents a VPO application from being considered.

So the question is simple: how can the community protect significant trees if a Council design process can be used to stop them being considered for protection?

ICAG submitted its application in September 2025 and waited almost a year for Council’s response.

These mature trees provide shade, habitat, amenity and character to Ipswich. Once they are gone, they are gone.

ICAG will continue to stand with the community and demand transparency, accountability and genuine protection for the Darcy Doyle trees.

This fight is not over.

"Save the Woogaroo Forest" Update

In the last update I spoke about how the submissions for the largest of the 4 proposed developments (Springview stage 2 & 3) had closed and we were requesting people to send emails urging Murray Watt to reject this development as well as the other 3 proposed developments.

 Since then, the developer has written to the department with their response to the submissions. From the date of the publishing of this response the minister has 40 days to determine the fate of Woogaroo Forest. This comes up on the 3rd of September.

 Amazingly the process is that the developer is the one that triages all the submissions and selects what are the issues raised. I’m sure you can imagine what would come out of this flawed process.

 Our campaign strategy is now to phone Murray Watt’s ministerial office to urge the minister to reject the development application. Evidently there is some requirement to record every telephone conversation. We have also been sending emails pointing out both the lack of impartiality by the ecological consultants and their failure to respond to many of the issues raised in the over 2000 submissions. I am aware many of you have made the call and sent the email. This is very much appreciated. There is guidance on our website to assist you if you have not yet made the call.

 This strategy has been quite successful in getting the ministers attention, as when asked by one of our group at a lecture he gave at the Mt Coo-tha Botanic Gardens whether he new about our campaign he said words to the effect that believe me I know all about it.

 We are aware that we cannot appeal the decision of the minister once he has made it. However, we can delay the decision on procedural grounds. We have sent a letter to the minister pointing out several procedural errors in the process. If successful this will give us time to create an alternative desk top ecological report questioning almost everything the developer’s ecological reports states.

Russell Miller