Source: Radio New Zealand
Ōtāhuhu resident Shirley Waru at the Court of Appeal on Wednesday. Supplied
By Erin Johnson
The Tūpuna Maunga Authority and an Ōtāhuhu resident were back in court on Wednesday in a long-running fight over consent to remove hundreds of trees.
Ōtāhuhu resident Shirley Waru previously challenged Auckland Council’s 2021 decision to grant the authority resource consent to remove 278 exotic trees from her local reserve and maunga, Ōtāhuhu Mount Richmond.
In a 2024 decision, the High Court found the council had inadequate information to assess the temporary adverse affects of removing the trees, and set aside the non-notified consent.
The maunga authority appealed that decision. Its lawyer, Paul Beverley, told the Court of Appeal on Wednesday that adequate information was available to the decision makers, who would have had Auckland’s Unitary Plan in mind when making their decision.
He said it was “not tenable” to suggest experienced council officers were unaware there could be non-visual and recreation affects from the tree removals, when they were a key part of the methodologies they work through in the unitary plan.
Beverley also pointed to information in the authority’s integrated management plan which outlined its restoration plans for the maunga.
However, when Justice Matthew Palmer asked for information on how long it would take for new plantings to become established, Beverley was not able to provide that detail.
In response, Waru’s lawyer James Little asserted the integrated management plan the council officers had access to was different to the revised one Beverley referred to.
“No one in this whole saga is opposed to planting native trees, the concern is with the wholesale felling of hundreds of exotic trees at once. That’s the real gist of the concern,” Little said.
“… a decision that cutting down hundreds of these trees all at once in this type of place forms a reasonably acceptable use is plainly contrary to the Auckland Unitary plan,” he said.
Auckland’s Tūpuna Maunga Authority manages Auckland’s tūpuna maunga, the volcanic cones regarded as spiritually and culturally significant to iwi and hapū in the region.
The authority plans to restore the cultural, spiritual and ecological mana of the maunga through planting native plants, including planting 39,000 indigenous plants on Ōtāhuhu.
The court has reserved its decision.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
