Paperbark Technologies

Nobody can tell what the inside of a trunk looks like from the lawn, so when that is the question we bring PiCUS Sonic Tomography to it and read the wood without cutting into the tree. Paperbark Technologies is an arboricultural consultancy. We do not prune trees and we do not remove them, so the advice in our reports has no work attached to it and nothing riding on the answer. Zana Sheary founded the firm and still consults, Brad Sheary is our general manager, and there are nine more arboricultural consultants alongside them, with more than twenty years of practice behind the name.

When a decision has to stand up to a council, a court or an insurer, it goes into an arboriculture report: the tree's health, its condition, and what that means for public safety. Where you want an answer on the spot instead, an onsite verbal consultation with a Visual Tree Assessment will give you one before we leave the site. Where risk is the question, Quantified Tree Risk Assessment puts a number on it, and we are QTRA registered and ISA TRAQ qualified, so that number comes off a method rather than off an opinion.

Development work is where a tree either survives the build or it does not. We write Tree Protection Plans and Tree Protection Specifications, assess root zones and tree protection areas against what the council requires, and put the arboricultural evidence behind council planning applications. Then we come back as arborist spotter and construction supervisor while the machinery is working, watching what happens around the root systems of the trees you have agreed to keep.

Our clients are local governments, developers, architects, property managers and homeowners. Water Corporation, Main Roads and Perth Zoo are among them, along with councils at Fremantle, Joondalup, Stirling, Swan, Kalamunda, Vincent, South Perth, Belmont, Victoria Park, Cambridge, Cottesloe, Mosman Park, Peppermint Grove and Mundaring, and further out at Waroona, Serpentine, Narembeen, Esperance and Derby West Kimberley, which takes us the length of Western Australia.

For councils and asset managers we build GIS tree inventories and run tree surveys, safety audits and tagging, so a whole population stays mapped and tracked instead of being rediscovered every few years. Aerial inspections go up by elevated work platform or on rope, so the canopy gets looked at as closely as the base. We diagnose pests and diseases before they take a tree, and our team holds DPIRD training for polyphagous shot hole borer. Tree valuations use the Helliwell and Burnley methods where a figure has to hold up legally or in planning, we advise on disputes over neighbouring and council trees, and we take on planting, fertilisation and habitat creation as well.

Our consultants' certifications run from Certificate III in Arboriculture through to the Diploma of Arboriculture at AQF Level 5, ISA Certified Arborist, QTRA and ISA TRAQ, Certificate III in Conservation and Land Management, a Bachelor's degree in Conservation and Wildlife Biology and a high risk EWP licence, and we all hold national police clearances. We are members of Arboriculture Australia, Arb West and the International Society of Arboriculture. The office runs Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Tell us the site, what you need and your timeframe, and we will come back with a quote, a plan and a timeline, on whichever method you would rather be contacted on.