Chained resister halts tree felling
‘Small victory’ for protesters as workers down tools
An Avondale resident chained himself to a crane yesterday to stop it felling a 160-year-old protected tree in the path of a major Auckland housing development.
Ockham and Marutu¯a¯hu Collective, developers behind the 117-unit Aroha project, say the tree at the corner of Ash St and Great North Rd needs to go, otherwise the development will not proceed. The company says the tree will be removed in line with its consent.
But the protesters say it is one of the few remaining trees of its size and stature in urban parts of the city, and are calling on the developers to incorporate it into their design.
As contractors arrived yesterday and looked to be preparing to remove the tree, “concerned Auckland ratepayer” Wayne Dwopsnic chained himself to the crane for a time.
About two hours later the protesters claimed a “small victory”, as the crane turned off and contractors appeared to be packing up for the day. Dwopsnic said they were not sure why the work stopped.
“Maybe the developer agreed to negotiate, or maybe it was because they were unable to get a trespass notice. Either way it is a small victory for us.”
Dwopsnic said he became involved in the protest after seeing developers fell thousands of mature trees across the city in recent years.
Arborist and protest group spokesman Zane Wedding said the macrocarpa was planted in 1860, and was one of only two of its size and stature in urbanised parts of the city.
It is one of just several thousand trees listed as a “Notable Tree” in the Auckland Unitary Plan, a process developed and advocated for by communities to “protect notable trees and notable groups of trees from danger or destruction resulting from development”. The schedule says such trees are considered among “the most significant” in Auckland.
Ockham owner and managing director Mark Todd yesterday said in a statement: “We have to weigh the price of growth, and we can’t have it all ways. In Ockham’s view, every hectare of destructive urban sprawl is a greater tragedy than the loss of one declining macrocarpa.
“This development of 117 apartments represents the equivalent of four to five hectares of urban sprawl and innumerable kilograms of carbon emissions that will be saved over the life of the project.”
Three other notable trees on site were being kept. The design was also consistent with objectives of the city’s Auckland Plan 2050, which rezoned the area from residential to mixed use, allowing buildings up to 21m high, Todd said.
The company was granted a resource consent, which went through a non-notified process, in November. An independent commissioner decided the street was already “welltreed” and losing the tree would not have “significant visual amenity, landscape or local character effects”.
Ockham also agreed to plant 10 mature trees in the Avondale area, in addition to 11 as per resource consent conditions, to offset the loss.
The consent still needed Auckland Council approval, as the tree’s owner, given most of it sat on council land.
Council chief executive Jim Stabback said the consent decision considered “every aspect of the development and the tree’s value”.
In a statement, the Tree Council said it was “disgusted at the way this public heritage asset on public land has been handled by Auckland Council. Clearly the protection offered by scheduling our most important trees in the Unitary Plan is meaningless.”
The development site was originally sold by council urbanregeneration agency Panuku to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MHUD), and onsold to Ockham (in partnership with Marutu¯a¯hu iwi) under the Land for Housing Programme.