A North Shore man who hacked a 100-year-plus protected kauri tree because it blocked his sea view has been handed what's thought to be a record fine.
But council staff say homeowners continue to mutilate, hack, ring-bark and poison the city's trees to maximise profits in a booming property market.
Birkenhead homeowner Ian Gillies was fined $7000 in the Environment Court on Monday for lopping 3.5m off the 19.5m kauri, believed to be a record for damaging a protected tree in the Auckland region.
North Shore City enforcement manager David Frith said Mr Gillies had hired a contractor to "sneak in and knobble" the tree at Le Roy's Bush near Little Shoal Bay.
"North Shore flagged this tree as significant on its district plan, Mr Gillies had no right to be doing anything to it, it was on public land," Mr Frith said.
The kauri's life is likely to have been severely reduced.
Mr Frith said people cutting down trees prior to their homes going up for sale were wrecking the environment for everyone else.
Native trees were routinely being poisoned, hacked and chopped. In one recent case paint thinner was poured into holes drilled in the trunks of pohutukawa. In another case the enforcement team arrived to stop contractors destroying a Takapuna cliff-top grove of pohutukawas to find the men had scarpered, leaving pulleys and ropes in the trees.
"In some cases you wonder at the sanity of people who do it, perching to attack a tree with a 10m cliff in front of you," he said.
He was "gratified" at what was probably a record fine and hoped it would act as a deterrent.
"Kauris don't take too well to being topped. Its life-span has been diminished and it will never be the form it should have been."
The tree is estimated to be at least 100 years old.
