By AMIE RICHARDSON
A century-old London plane tree on Auckland University land is coming under the axe this weekend to make way for a new engineering lecture theatre.
The tree, alongside the university's engineering block in Symonds St, is between 80 to 120 years old and has significant historical value. The
public has not been consulted about the felling.
Although Auckland City Council permission is needed to remove exotic trees higher than 8m in residential areas, trees in the central business district can be felled without consultation unless they have heritage protection.
Auckland Museum's curator of botany, Ewen Cameron, said he was upset at the lack of consultation and disappointed that the university had made no special allowance for its trees, particularly those with historical significance.
"In this case the university can say, 'We want to put a building here' and just do it. The university has no management plan for protection of the trees."
Mr Cameron said the tree was one of only a few large, well-formed plane trees in Auckland and was an important landscape feature.
The university's grounds superintendent, Tony Palmer, said he was not involved in the decision to fell the tree.
But he was disappointed because it was a nice specimen and had a high historical and landscape value.
He hoped more consultation between the university and the public would take place about tree felling, and thought it was important that the university put together a more comprehensive grounds management plan that ranked trees for rarity, landscape and historical value.
University registrar Warwick Nicoll said the university had gone through all the correct procedures to reach its decision.
It had received council permission to build the new lecture theatre and improve the foyer of the existing block and had promised the council to protect the other trees in Symonds St while construction took place.
An arborist's report confirmed that the tree had no protection.
The university would plant natives to replace the lost plane tree.
Mr Nicoll said the external environment was important to the university.
This could be seen in the collection of native trees in the old Government House grounds and around the clock tower building in Princes St.
nzherald.co.nz/environment
