Seeing Australia’s beloved gumtrees dying makes my insides knot. If they can’t survive, how can we? | Jess Harwood

Even the hardy eucalypts are finding their limits as we experience more frequent bushfires, heatwaves and droughts

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Last week I went to Adelaide to see a man about a tree. The man was Dr Dean Nicolle and the tree was actually 10,000 eucalypt trees and mallees, of over 800 species, which Dean has been planting on a block of land south of Adelaide since 1993.

Dean’s passion for eucalypts is incredible. It makes me realise that so much conservation happens purely because someone is just absolutely captivated by something. And thank goodness Dean is, because his love for the eucalypt made the Currency Creek Arboretum, which is designed to bring together all of Australia’s eucalypt species in one place for research.