Central Otago District Council (CODC) adopted its tree policy with no major changes to the previous version, and two minor additions at a council meeting last week (November 9).

CODC looks after close to 6,500 trees in Central, made up of approximately 3,000 street trees and 3,500 amenity trees.

The amendments were to include the Wilding Conifer Control Policy and the proposed Open Spaces and Recreation Strategy. 

The next full review of the Tree Policy will be in 2025.

CODC parks and recreation manager Gordon Bailey said the policy covers how CODC manages trees on council land, including parks, reserves and other places such as roadsides.

Councillor Lynley Claridge asked if Reserve Management Plans (RMP) needed to be updated at the same time as the tree policy, and raised the issue of Half Mile Reserve.

The issue of controlling wilding pines became contentious after residents were upset by the felling and proposed felling of both planted and self-seeded pines near Alexandra. 

Read more: Strong debate over wilding pines

Gordon said there were no plans in “the immediate future” to work on a RMP for Half Mile reserve and that his team would need direction from the community board on this, and would need to fit it into their work programme. 

CODC executive manager planning and environment Louise van der Voort said the tree policy applies to parks or reserves without individual RMPs as well as those that have really old RMPs. 

“[There is a] wider piece of work, over all the parks and reserves in the district… [we are] starting at a high level… understanding what pieces of land we have and some we don’t even know we’ve got.”

Central Otago district mayor Tim Cadogan, Cr Tamah Alley and Cr Martin McPherson at the council meeting

Read the CODC Tree Policy 2022 here.