Last look at Auckland icon as era comes to end

By BERNARD ORSMAN

The lone pine on One Tree Hill will be cut down, branch by branch, as early as Friday.

Plans are in place to remove the 125-year-old Monterey pine with a ceremony and dignity befitting its icon status on the Auckland skyline.

Auckland mayor Christine Fletcher will announce today when the pine will come down. The Auckland City Council will approve the removal of the tree under the emergency provisions of the Resource Management Act and its district plan on Thursday night.

The Herald understands the council will close the summit of One Tree Hill as early as Friday morning, or at the weekend, depending on the weather, to bring an end to the dying pine. A helicopter will have to be used, although it cannot work in winds greater than 30 km/h.

Representatives of Ngati Whatua, whose spiritual links with the site date back to about 1600, will sing a karakia to bless the tree before it is felled in sections using a heavy-lift helicopter.

The alternative of using a crane was ruled out because of the damage it would have caused to kumara pits and other archeological features near the base of the tree.

Maori activist Mike Smith took a chainsaw to the base of the pine in 1994. This was followed by another chainsaw attack last year, which accelerated the decline of the tree.

Winds of up to hurricane strength on the summit of One Tree Hill in the past month have further split the trunk, causing it to lean another 16 degrees and making it a hazard. The 20m pine is being held up with wire cables.

A council parks spokesman, Cameron Parr, said Ngati Whatua would use part of the trunk for carving and other sections of the tree would go on display at the Cornwall Park visitor centre. No part of the tree would be turned into souvenirs, he said.

It could take several years for a replacement tree or trees to be planted, depending on how long it takes the council to get a resource consent.

It is feasible to plant a tree of up to 7m in height and 12 tonnes in weight, but a smaller tree, of around 1m, could have a better chance of survival. Experts believe a pohutukawa is the tree most likely to survive, but a totara would have strong historic and cultural significance.

One Tree Hill was known to Maori as Maungakiekie or "totara that stands alone," after a totara stick used to sever the umbilical cord of a high-born baby boy named Koroki. The stick was stuck in the ground above the buried placenta and grew into a sacred landmark.

A totara or pohutukawa - it is not clear which - was felled for firewood in the 1850s by "some goth of a settler," as a newspaper report at the time put it.

Then-landowner Sir John Logan Campbell twice tried to grow natives trees on the summit and failed.

The second attempt involved puriri surrounded by a shelter-belt of pines. The natives died, but five pines survived.

Another native was planted about 1910, but died.

By 1940, only two pines were left and in the early 1960s, the second-to-last tree was felled in an attack by vandals with a crosscut saw and axe.