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Hibiscus Coast Forest and Bird and Arran Point residents are fighting the proposed development of a subdivision at 117 Arran Point Parade, adjacent to Ōrewa River.
They took action as soon as the story broke in the November 22 edition of Hibiscus Matters, starting a petition and contacting local council representatives.
The petition currently has more than 1500 signatures.
The proposal involves removing 192sqm of protected bush from the 1.32ha site in order to facilitate the development of eight residential lots. The bush is protected by Auckland Council as a Significant Ecological Area (SEA) because of its diversity, rarity and provision of bird migration pathways and buffers.
Neighbours say that locals use a track through the bush all the time for recreation, believing it was public land – in fact it has been privately owned since 2014, which is when the former part of the Millennium track within the site was closed.
They want the resource consent application publicly notified so that everyone can have input.
Local Forest & Bird volunteers have been undertaking pest control in this bush since
November 2019. In that time, they have removed around 2900 rats, 20 possums and 13 hedgehogs.
Forest and Bird chair, Pauline Smith, is angry that any part of an SEA is fair game for development.
“Why are we not protecting mature bush, which is sequestering carbon?” she says.
Developer J G Land director Joel Giddy says that the 192sqm of proposed clearing in the SEA is all on the fringe, and includes gorse and weeds.
“The proposed fringe clearing within the SEA only amounts to 2.6 percent of the SEA within this lot,” he says. “It includes mitigation planting, and an increase in protected bush, so we feel this area will be enhanced. The current protected area is 57 percent and we are proposing to increase that to 68 percent. You would have thought that was positive, not a negative.”
He says none of the properties he hopes to create will have riparian rights so the bush at the river’s edge will not be affected. “The bush is completely protected, apart from the proposed building platforms,” Giddy says.
He says it’s unfortunate that residents thought the bush was Council reserve, or that the walkway was still open, when it is not.
The site (left) is covered in bush from top to bottom – the developer is proposing to remove 192sqm. 
Will the public have a say?
Council planners are still in the process of deciding whether the resource consent application should be publicly notified, or notified to nearby property owners – the developer has asked for no public notification. Until then, the only way to have your say is via the petition, called ‘Stop the removal of native bush on Arran Point’, which can be found at www.change.org
