Treecovery is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee – a social enterprise – based in the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia. We’re managed by a Board of locally-based Directors and our mission is to assist individuals and local communities impacted by natural disasters – primarily the 2019-20 Cudlee Creek Bushfire, one of many that burned during Australia’s Black Summer – while also contributing to broader community wellbeing and boosting local economic activity.
We have been funded by the commonwealth government through the Black Summer Bushfire Recovery (BSBR) Program to help the recovery of residents of the Adelaide Hills affected by the Cudlee Creek fire. Specifically, we engage local small-medium businesses to remove, transport and process farm forestry plantations killed by the bushfire, but still standing.
These trees currently pose a considerable risk to life, property and livestock, and would be a significant addition to the fuel load if another fire was to burn through the region. They are a liability, but embracing the concept of the circular economy, we believe they represent an untapped resource from which value can still be derived. Therefore, we try to find creative ways to process them into value-added products, rather than merely having them felled, piled up and burned all over again.
As the trees come down, we will use our Hardwood Mills Australia portable mill to produce viable timber products from as many of the logs as possible. Those not suitable for milling will be chipped and converted into biochar, a material with diverse industrial applications and enormous carbon drawdown and sequestration capabilities.
Once we’ve removed the trees, our goal is to revegetate, regenerate and rehabilitate the sites from which they came, to a) enhance microbial activity in depleted soils, b) increase biodiversity, creating and linking areas where native flora and fauna can thrive, and c) reduce future bushfire risk through strategic plantings of fire retardant species in layouts that discourage the spread of fire.
Treecovery is a socially-responsible, community-oriented organisation and as such, we are members of several local, state and national bodies, including:
Treecovery Ltd. 