Plan to save giant kauri has roots in Māori wisdom

Look out at the forest of Waita kere and you will see the skeleton of Aunt Agatha above the treeline.

- Tess McClure AUCKLAND

The tree – who gained her nickname from generations of schoolchildren – was alive and topped with a proud plume of foliage just a few years ago. Now the trunk stands white as an exposed bone, huge ribbons of bark sloughed off on the ground like recently shed skin.

Auckland council’s senior kauri dieback ranger Stuart Leighton walks down an empty track toward her, stepping on to the large, freshly completed wooden deck. It’s kind of unusual, he says, to build a viewing platform for a dead tree. “We wanted to make a point: this isn’t some made-up thing, or something that’s not serious or something on a tiny little scale that we’re overcooking. This is a very real thing that’s happening to our forest.”

This park is the frontline of the battle to save kauri (Agathis australis) – Aotearoa’s largest, most sacred trees. Aunt Agatha is estimated to be more than 1,000 years old, and has stood over this valley since before humans arrived on New Zealand’s shores. She survived colonial arrivals and the voracious appetite for timber, outlasting the transformation of Auckland from settlement to city of 1.57 million.