A large part of a city park has gone from trees to a pile of waste wood after the Rotorua Lakes Council chopped down more than 6ha of trees in Linton Park.
The gum trees were removed due to safety issues, but the removal created its own safety issues after dozens of cars converged on the reserve to collect the waste wood and it got "a bit out of control".
The council's sports and recreation, open spaces operations leader Garry Page said the free public collection of waste timber from Linton Park for people to use as firewood had been temporary stopped because of the safety concerns.
He said there had been cases of between 30 and 40 vehicles converging on the park at any one time, accompanied in many cases by young children running around.
"It's got a bit out of control and we're very concerned about the risk to public safety. "So we've had to temporarily halt access for a couple of weeks while we set up a permit system to manage numbers and improve safety for the public."