On a mission to protect 500-year-old tree

A woman who has been fascinated by a hı¯nau tree for 30 years went on a mission to get it heritage protected.

Monyeen Wedge is one of the few permanent residents in Lochmara Bay, a remote area of the Marlborough Sounds which can only be accessed by boat.

Wedge said she had always been fascinated with the hı¯nau tree in her bay, which she often walked past.

‘‘It always stuck out to me. It was very attractive,’’ Wedge said.

‘‘I think probably one of the first things that made me notice it was because it was so pretty. It’s got these lovely red flowers in spring, and that was what made me take an interest in it, and then I started getting information.’’

Hı¯nau trees are a native tree to New Zealand. While its species is not under threat, Wedge said it was the only noticeable hı¯nau tree in the bay.

Wedge has long been vocal about what she supports, and had been known to make the $400 trip on water taxis in order to attend the Marlborough District Council’s long term plan hearings.

She said about 30 years ago, someone from the Department of Conservation suggested that she collected seeds from the tree and threw them into other places in the Sounds.

‘‘I did that, but

it never seemed to get any trees to grow, so I thought, bugger this, I’m not doing very good at reproducing this,’’ Wedge said.

Around the same time, she noticed the tree was often where possums roamed at night.

‘‘Admittedly, I did protect it early on. I put a possum band around it, because in autumn when the fruit was on the tree I could go out at night and there would be nine or 10 possums out,’’ Wedge said.

‘‘So I got this big band put around it so that they couldn’t climb it.’’

The band proved successful and had even helped the tree to grow.

In 2011, Wedge started the process to get the tree protected, which required support from the Department of Conservation and the Marlborough District Council.

She sent proof to the council the tree was over 500-years-old and therefore preceded any European settlement in the area.

‘‘To get it protected you have to go through proving its age, all those sorts of things,’’ she said.

‘‘You have to get somebody who has a scientific qualification to confirm the number of rings to confirm how old it is and to take photographs of it, and its GPS location, and also I had to get the community to sign, to support that they would want that as a heritage tree.’’

Upon getting the tree a heritage status, Wedge then had a sign made, which included a rhyme, to let people know about the significance of the

tree.

‘‘I think it’s very important now everywhere in New Zealand, I think it’s very important that the local population identifies these trees and gets them protected because more and more, they’re becoming rare. ‘‘We don’t want to end up like the poor people in Northland with the kauri forest dying on its feet, and we don’t want people in the Sounds thinking that they can treat these heritage trees just like any other trees, because they don’t know it’s a heritage tree.’’