By BERNARD ORSMAN
Preparations are under way to remove One Tree Hill's historic pine, which has less than three years to live.
One or more totara or pohutukawa trees are prime candidates to be planted once the 125-year-old Monterey pine goes.
Two chainsaw attacks, in 1994 and last September, have lopped years off the life expectancy of the natural icon.
The Auckland City Council is applying for a resource consent to remove and replace the pine, which is listed as one of the city's foremost trees.
Arborist Tony Searle said that given the reduced life expectancy of the tree, a resource consent was urgent, particularly as the process could take 18 months with appeals.
The consent is expected to be lodged next month and the public will have the opportunity to make submissions.
In a report to councillors, Mr Searle said the pine was progressively losing its needles, leaning at a rate of 1cm a month and being supported in high winds by cables.
It was calculated that only 12 per cent of its internal waterconducting system and 55 per cent of the structural wood remained intact.
Mr Searle said the tree should be removed when it relied entirely on cables for support or when its health became irreversible, highly visible and therefore "unsustainable."
City arborists have considered the extreme weather on the summit of One Tree Hill and cultural and historical considerations and come up with four possible replacements.
These are totara, pine, pohutukawa and puriri.
Further assessment of the four trees' strengths and weaknesses favoured the totara and pohutukawa.
Mr Searle said the totara had the stronger historical and cultural significance.
The pohutukawa would be best suited to the site. Landscapers say a big advantage of the pohutukawa is that a 10-year-old tree could be transplanted.
From early in the 17th century until the mid-1850s a lone, sacred totara occupied the summit, until a settler chopped it down for fencing or firewood.
Photographs from early last century show three pines.
Two survived until one was destroyed in 1962, rumour has it by Australian Boy Scouts attending a jamboree in Cornwall Park.
Sir Hugh Kawharu, Ngati Whatua kaumatua, said yesterday that the tribe had a strong interest in the tree and its symbolism with Maungakiekie (One Tree Hill).
He said the tribe would discuss the matter with the council and make a submission on the resource consent.
All Mike Smith, the Maori activist who took a chainsaw to the tree, wants in place of the ailing tree is "Richard Prebble's head."
"That's my pick, in all seriousness. Maybe it could be a warning against the perils of privatisation."
He said his protest at the time was against privatisation of the country's assets, and Treaty of Waitangi policy, which he said the Act party leader had campaigned vociferously about.
If the suggestion of Mr Prebble's head was disallowed, Mr Smith said, it was the call of local people as to what should replace the pine.
New era for One Tree Hill icon
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