Calypto Hollows

A hollow big enough for something to live in takes a tree between 100 and 150 years to form on its own. Waiting that out is not much of a plan for the animals that need one now, so we make them. Using current arboricultural technique and specialised tools, our hollow carving and habitat pruning forms hollows and habitat inside trees that are already standing, and it is done without affecting the health or the structure of the tree. Live trees, dead trees, habitat trunks and nest boxes are all suitable, and severed limbs get finished with coronet cuts so they look and behave like limbs that failed on their own.

What decides one of these jobs is the tree, every time. Habitat only lasts as long as the tree carrying it stays sound, which is why the approach here is a deliberately conservative and sustainable one and why nothing gets cut into a tree at the cost of its health or its structure. The coronet cut belongs to the same thinking. Where a limb has to come off, the end is shaped to replicate a limb that failed naturally, so what stays on the tree goes on doing a job for the wildlife long after we have packed up and gone.

Our arborist reports and arboricultural consultancy serve commercial and domestic clients across the full range: tree risk assessments, preliminary tree assessments, arboricultural impact assessments, tree protection management plans, tree audits, tree inspections and health assessments, root exploration and investigation, and consultation on whatever else a tree has raised. That work is AQF Level 5 qualified with extra and ongoing training in tree risk and tree biology, carried out as a Registered Consulting Arborist and appropriately insured, so what you get back is a document written by someone who has to stand behind it.

On the tools, our contract climbing takes in crown reductions, restoration pruning on damaged trees, selective pruning and limb removals, habitat enhancement pruning, storm damage and emergency works, and removals with habitat creation built into the job from the outset. Low impact tree work and careful pruning of large trees is our speciality, and the climbing, pruning and rigging behind it is AQF Level 3 qualified and insured as a Registered Practicing Arborist.

Nils Karlsson started Calypto Hollows out of a love for conservation and for the country in and around the Grampians National Park (Gariwerd), and his knowledge of native flora and fauna and how they hold together is what the habitat side is built on. We are based in Western Victoria and work right across Australia from here. If you have a tree that needs assessing, a habitat project that needs an arborist on it, or storm damage that will not keep until next week, ring Nils and talk it through with him.