Lime Avenue, planted ca. 1932 by Robert MacDougall

Because trees, as Nelson arborist Brad Cadwallader puts it, don’t have voices — so that means that when need arises, someone else has to speak for them. And need has arisen in my home city of Christchurch, in recent times.

Speaking for Christchurch’s Heritage and Notable Trees

I usually keep my blog to book and book related topics, but lately you may have noticed a slight ‘tree’ theme — most notably how Melbourne residents were sending emails to their trees.

As a city on a plain, trees are just as important to Christchurch’s urban character as they are to Melbourne’s. The city’s Heritage and Notable trees are also one of the few things  that have come through the earthquakes and recovered—unlike our heritage and notable buildings, the vast majority of which had to be demolished following the quakes. So you’d think we’d value the trees more, right?

Apparently not. Instead we are facing having over 80% of Christchurch’s scheduled Heritage and Notable trees delisted and losing any protection under the Christchurch Plan. There has been no public consultation on this proposal, and the Plan and Hearing process is being fast-tracked under Earthquake Recovery legislation and with only very limited right of appeal.*
(*On points of law only [not fact], to the High Court.)

We only have one chance to try and retain these special trees — in a hearing process that requires both expert evidence and legal representation to be effective. As you can imagine, this takes a huge amount of time and costs a great deal of money. We’ve already achieved a great deal through a special mediation process — but to keep going we urgently need to raise more money, so we can keep speaking for Christchurch’s (Notable) trees through the Hearing process.

To help fund raise, we have set up a Give A Little page with a video that gives more context to what we’re all about. I hope you’ll take time to check it out and give as generously as you can manage:

Saving Christchurch’s Heritage and Notable Trees

I, and everyone else in our small but committed group of citizens will be deeply grateful. We have lost so much of value in Christchurch over the past five years, that to face the loss of protection for so many significant trees as well feels like one more body blow in Christchurch’s post-earthquake “geography of loss.”

And please, share this post and/or the Give a Little link with as many people as possible.

Thank you.

Note: Although none of these photos are of NZ native tree species, they have been
particularly hard hit by these proposals.

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Back to Release Week Celebrations:

For those of you are eager to find out the result of the book giveaway and the Tuckerization draw that have been running this week, the result will post this evening, NZ time. So stay posted. 😉