Auckland losing 1000 trees a week, properties 'worth more if you bulldoze'

Tuesday, 3 August 2021

A protester ties himself to a digger in fight to save 100-year-old Avondale native trees on Canal Rd (Video December 2020).

One thousand trees are felled in urban Auckland every week, a coalition calling for greater tree protection says.

Only about 2000 trees across the region are individually listed as “notable”, and the “Stop the Chop” group said 60 per cent of the city’s trees are unprotected on private property.

Dr Mels Barton, the secretary of the Tree Council, said not every tree can be saved.

However, the rate of housing redevelopment and the high value of land has fuelled the loss of an estimated 250,000 trees in the six years since blanket protection was lost under the Resource Management Act.

One of a group protesting the felling of a tree for an Avondale apartment development in February 2021.

* Auckland local board member arrested while protesting Western Springs tree felling

* Auckland tree protest: People 'dragged out' by police, eight arrested

“If you have no rules, the [Auckland Council] Unitary Plan allows you to do whatever you like as long as it fits in the zoning rules,” Barton said.

The Tree Council and arborists have united under the “Stop the Chop” slogan to encourage people to unite against proposed changes to part of the Resource Management Act. Submissions and petition signings must be in by August 4.

Barton said the figure of 1000 trees a week being felled in Auckland could be an underestimate, and was arrived at after surveying major arborist firms across the city.

Security guards and police with protestors at a Canal Rd site in Avondale where 46 trees were later felled.

She said it is not just about the number of trees, but their age and size.

Seventy-five per cent of trees across Auckland are shorter than 10 metres, and many new plantings won’t have the space to grow higher than a hedge, she said.

“Land values are so high that properties are worth more if you bulldoze trees, particularly the bigger ones.”

Campaigners have staged protests on several private sites, with the Mana Rakaū - Save Canal Road Native Trees group spending 245 days in Avondale in a fruitless bid to save 46 old and native trees.

In the same suburb, protestors unsuccessfully tried to stop the removal of a 150-year-old macrocarpa from a site where 117 apartments are being built.

Following that protest, Mark Todd, the co-founder of the developer Ockham, said the company would work with the occupiers to push for urgent scheduling of 13 notable trees in the area.

He said he believed the company's discussions with the group had “accelerated the wider conversation about tree protection in Auckland, which has swung all over the map in the past two decades and is wholly inadequate right now”.

Barton said the worst-case scenario would be that the new legislation, the Natural and Built Environments Act, “will not require councils to provide much-needed protection of ever-dwindling urban forests”.

Barton said it is not yet clear how protection would work, and another possibility is to offer development bonuses as a trade-off for retaining trees on a site.

She said it isn’t as simple as protecting native trees versus exotic, and other ideas could include requiring protection-worthy trees to be shifted on a site to an area free from building.

Under the current regime to protect individual trees under the Unitary Plan, the council is not adding any new trees to the “notables” list.

“Generations in a few years’ time will have to deal with the implications if urban forests continue to reduce,” Barton said.

Environment Minister David Parker earlier said the Natural and Built Environments Act is one of a set of new laws the Government will enact to replace the Resource Management Act.

“The RMA takes too long, costs too much and hasn't protected the environment,” he said.

The public will have another opportunity to give feedback on the proposed act in early 2022.