Tree protester back to earth
The protester who perched in an old Auckland kauri tree for three days has come down and been charged with trespassing.
Michael Tavares handed himself in to police, after the landowners indicated that the tree would be saved.
The tree, now estimated to be 150 to 200 years old, was at the centre of a protest after it and a 300-year-old rimu were about to be felled to make way for two houses in the suburb of Titirangi.
However, on Thursday morning the landowners, John Lenihan and Jane Greensmith, said in an open letter to Aucklanders that the tree would be saved.
Tavares, who had been up the tree to protect it from being cut down for more than 80 hours, came down at 12.20pm.
He then handed himself in at the New Lynn police station.
Outside the station, Tavares said he would appear in Waitakere District Court on April 16, charged with trespassing. He had been warned about that by police just hours after he first climbed into the tree.
Meanwhile, the developers who intended to cut down the two trees would not let council biosecurity experts onto the west Auckland site to check for kauri dieback disease.
It’s one of a series of gaps in the consultation leading up to permission to fell the trees on the two Titirangi sections.
Auckland Council’s development committee yesterday voted to review the process around the granting of consents to architects John Lenihan and Jane Greensmith to clear the trees and build two houses. It has no power to stop the work. However, in an open letter yesterday, the owners said they would not cut down the two tress.
Waitakere Ranges Local Board chairwoman Sandra Coney told the committee the issue of kauri dieback had barely been taken into consideration in the consents, even though the disease was a big problem in the area.
‘‘I do know the biosecurity team wanted to go on the site to do some testing but the owner would not allow this,’’ she said.
It also emerged that the owners took it upon themselves to consult with iwi groups, but did not tell them that the work involved removing a significant kauri.
One iwi group did object to the removal of tupuna taonga (ancestral treasures), but council planners thought their objection related to the first site which had already gained consent.
The local board was not consulted at all about one of the consents, Coney said.
It was shocked that Auckland Transport (AT) had agreed that a garage could be built on the road reserve at the front of the site over the roots of two of the best kauri in the street. AT had also not consulted the board.
‘‘None of this is considered in the resource consent, none at all,’’ she said.
Officials told councillors that the changes to the Resource Management Act made by central government overruled some of the protections the local Waitakere Ranges Heritage Act had provided.
Council chief operating officer Dean Kimpton said he had been talking to Lenihan and Greensmith and would continue the dialogue until a better outcome could be achieved.
Protesting neighbours presented the committee with a petition signed by 26,000 people opposed to the felling of the trees.