Two pōhutukawa trees on the public land behind Hahei Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula have been drilled and poisoned, and the Department of Conservation has asked anyone who knows who did it to come forward.
DOC staff said there was “clear evidence of drill and fill holes around the base” of the trees at the Hahei Beach Marginal Strip in the Hauraki-Coromandel district. The department posted about the discovery on Facebook and RNZ reported it on Tuesday afternoon. 1News carried the same account the same evening.
Drill and fill is exactly what it sounds like. Holes are bored into the trunk and something is put into them that the tree then carries through its own plumbing. It is a slow way to kill a tree and a quiet one. The canopy usually looks fine for weeks or months, which is part of the reason these cases are so hard to pin on anyone. By the time a tree browns off, whoever stood at its base with a drill is long gone, and so is any chance of catching them in the act.
DOC has not said what it thinks the motive was, and no one has been charged. What the department did say is what the two trees were doing before someone put holes in them. Pōhutukawa flowers feed tūī and bellbirds through summer. The trunks and branches shelter geckos, insects and spiders. And the roots hold the ground together, which on a Coromandel beachfront is not a small job. Marginal strip land sits right on the edge, where dune, soil and cliff meet the sea, and the trees growing on it are a large part of what stops that edge moving inland after a storm.
“Please help us protect these special coastal trees,” DOC staff wrote, asking anyone with information to ring 0800 DOC HOT, or 0800 362 468, and quote the case reference CLE-12213.
The strip of land the trees stand on is worth explaining, because a lot of people who use these beaches assume the grassy or scrubby margin behind the sand belongs to whoever owns the house looking at it. It does not. Marginal strips are Crown land, generally 20 metres wide, running along the coast and along larger rivers and lakes. They were formalised in Part 4A of the Conservation Act 1987 and they exist, in the words of the Act, for public access and recreation and for conservation. Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa, the Outdoor Access Commission, notes that strips created since 1990 shift as the water boundary shifts, so the public access survives erosion rather than being washed away with it.
That legal status is why the numbers attached to this case are so large. Damaging, poisoning or destroying native vegetation on public conservation land is a serious offence and can carry fines of up to $300,000.
That maximum, though, is a long way from what usually happens. The most recent comparable case DOC has publicised was resolved barely a month ago. Retired property developer Alan Trent felled five black beech trees and cleared vegetation from the Toko Ngawa Point Marginal Strip near Kaiteriteri, on land next to his own property, in July 2024. He argued he had been given verbal permission years earlier. DOC said no permission was ever granted and produced a 2010 letter telling him he needed the department’s approval before removing vegetation. In the Nelson District Court in June, Judge Snell discharged Trent without conviction and ordered him to pay $7,200 in reparation to DOC plus $5,000 in costs, according to the department. He also picked up separate infringement notices from Tasman District Council.
DOC ranger Helen Otley put the department’s case for the trees plainly at the time. “Native trees provide food and shelter for native birds and insects, sequester carbon and help stabilise slopes; they are an important part of New Zealand’s ecosystem,” she said.
Five mature trees, a documented offender, a full court process, and the bill came to just over $12,000. That is the realistic yardstick for the Hahei case if anyone is ever identified, and it is a fair distance short of $300,000. It also assumes someone is identified at all, which in poisoning cases is the hard part. A felled tree leaves a stump, a chainsaw and usually a witness. A poisoned one leaves a few drill holes the width of a pencil and a tree that dies on its own schedule.
Hahei is not a quiet corner of the country either. It is the main road-end for Mautohe Cathedral Cove, one of the most photographed places in New Zealand, and it carries very large numbers of visitors through a small settlement every summer. The tracks in the area only reopened in January after years of storm damage and geotechnical work following Cyclone Gabrielle. Coastal vegetation is doing real structural work on that stretch of coast, and it has been tested hard in the past three years.
Whether the two trees at Hahei survive is not yet clear. Pōhutukawa are tough, and trees that have been poisoned sometimes hold on, particularly if the dose was small or badly placed. Replacing a mature one is not a matter of planting a seedling and waiting a season. A pōhutukawa of any size on an exposed beachfront represents decades of growth in a place where growing anything is difficult.
Anyone with information about the Hahei trees can contact DOC on 0800 362 468, quoting CLE-12213. Reports can be made anonymously.
Have you seen native trees damaged or poisoned where you live, and did anything come of it? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
Leave a Reply