The New Zealand Arboricultural Association (NZAA) Inc., The Tree Council (Inc) and Greenscene Limited (the country’s largest specialist arboricultural consultancy) are very disappointed that Clause 52 of the Resource Management Simplifying and Streamlining (RMA) Amendment Bill has now become law.

Clause 52 states that, in urban environments, only trees or groups of trees that are identified in a plan, in a reserve protected by the Reserves Act, or subject to a conservation management plan or strategy are protected under the Act – that means many trees, currently under the protection of the RMA, will now lose that protection.

Lisa Sanderson, NZAA Vice President says the Government did not thoroughly consider and explore suggestions put forward in the Select Committee Hearings.  

“As a collective that understand trees and the management of the urban forest, we are well placed to comment on the implications of the new law and recommended a number of modifications that would have streamlined the RMA process and reduced associated costs, whilst maintaining some level of tree protection.  Sadly, that expertise and experience has been ignored.

Sigrid Shayer, Chair of The Tree Council, says: “It will be interesting to see how amenable Auckland Councils will be to undertaking large scale scheduling of trees.  We understand Auckland City Council has already limited the number of trees they will allow community boards to put forward for scheduling to 25 trees each and they will only schedule trees with the consent of the land owner – given this, how many will be scheduled on development sites?  Or will we just have to be content with treeless development sites?”

The law change raises more questions than answers, including the definition of terms such as ‘a group of trees’ and ‘trimming’, the debate as to which reserves are currently protected and what areas of a council are now classed as ‘urban’, and what a council should do with existing Resource and Subdivision consents that require vegetation to be protected for privacy reasons or to maintain an ecosystem.

Ms Sanderson adds: “We presented the Government with an opportunity for informed discussion and mutually beneficial compromise, but its standard responses clearly demonstrated they were poorly informed.  Apparently the new purpose of the RMA is to sustainably manage the use, development and protection of natural and physical resources – except trees.”

Ms Shayer says: “We now have a bad law that prevents communities from determining their own set of vegetation protection rules and fundamentally undermines the environmental sustainability principles of the RMA.  We will continue to work to improve this legislation.”

Also see NZ Arboricultural Association www.nzarbor.org.nz

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