Imagine working for seven years to build a community food forest. It would be a very fulfilling project to take a neighborhood and transform it into a living food source full of fruit trees, luscious vines, and edible ground cover.

And imagine all your hard work being torn away in an instant by the city council.

Literally torn away; what would you be thinking and feeling as they sent landscaping crews to tear out the trees, some with fruit still one them, and grind them into wood chips.

Unfortunately, what could only be a feeling of utter exasperation and crushing disbelief was forced upon residents of Sunshine Coast, Australia. The people of a section of the city banded together to transform 11 city blocks into a food forest of which at least 200 people enjoyed the fruits.

The city council felled an entire stretch of this Urban Food Street, even preventing residents from collecting the fruit before the destruction.

Councillor Ted Hungerford said the felling of the trees was disappointing, but the council was left with no option after a resident had not applied for a permit, nor opted to relocate the trees to private property.

He said the requirement for a free permit and public liability insurance applied throughout the region, and so far 23 residents had fulfilled those requirements.

Another 10 residents had removed or relocated the trees to private property.

Cr Hungerford said this morning's actions came after many months of negotiations, and the landholder for the three properties had also been issued with $609 infringement notices for each property.

Another four properties have compliance notices due in June.

And here is a perfect example of the insanity of government at every level. Here are people coming up with real solutions and productive community activities. But all the city council can do is gripe about permits and liability insurance.

Some residents said they didn't even know about the requirements, but that hardly matters. What matters is that some bullies in the local government care more about pieces of paper than human beings. They care more about protecting their worthless pathetic City Council jobs, and probably imagine themselves quite the adept local governors. Clearly, they are out of touch with reality.