We’ve known that from our own experiences with a certain local property businessman going back over a decade; the reason why strong council protection for trees is needed. See several earlier posts on the subject.
Auckland’s Valley Road looks different than it used to a few years ago. Not in a strikingly obvious way, but in the details, those subtle changes you’d notice if you walked along it every day.
It’s different in that some of the beautiful old trees are gone; that rhododendron with the colourful blossoms scattering scented petals on the footpath; that titanic bottlebrush in the corner of the garden, the one that played landlord to a handful of tūī that woke the neighbours with their maddeningly wonderful racket.
There used to be a handsome old house, with a front yard splattered with shades of yellow and green. It’s now consumed by a supermarket car park.
A small stand of native trees — in front of the Greenpeace office, of all places – gone; a century old tōtara, once behind a backpackers and now nowhere to be found, surplus to requirements; the rhododendron and the bottlebrush, one a stump and the other history.
“As I see them come down people are replacing them with bigger and bigger house footprints, garages, pools,” McMullin says.
“A lot of the big sites around here are being bought by developers, and it’s really changing the character of the city. We’ll never see those big trees again.”