Summarised by Centrist
Auckland Council is keeping large parts of the Waitākere Ranges closed on the grounds that trampers spread kauri dieback, despite its own commissioned research failing to prove a link.
Dr Emily Anderson, a scientist and spokesperson for Walk Tramp Run, told RCR the closures are based on outdated panic and politics, not evidence.
“The picture they had back in 2017 was that all the kauri trees were very quickly deteriorating and it looked like they were everywhere,” she said. “But in 2022 the council commissioned the first real survey and it found that only 23 percent of sick trees actually had the pathogen. Even then, they couldn’t find an association between where the tracks are and where the disease is. In science, you have to be confident in what you’re saying. They weren’t.”
Anderson said trampers were blamed without proof. “There is no evidence. In fact, sometimes there’s more PA [Phytophthora agathidicida – the soil-borne pathogen responsible for kauri dieback disease] further away from the tracks. If this has been here for decades and people have been walking those tracks the whole time, you’d expect to see it everywhere. But it’s very localised.”
So why are tracks still closed?
Anderson points to politics. “We’ve been told there’s not much of an appetite to take risks. The only document I can find that says tracks must be ‘dry foot’ is an agreement signed in 2018 between Auckland Council and Te Kawerau ā Maki. That’s what’s holding everything up. But the situation was different in 2018. Why aren’t they reviewing it now?”
She believes locals still support the closures because of misleading claims that went uncorrected. “In 2017 the public was told 70 percent of infected kauri were within 50 metres of tracks. That statement really stuck. It isn’t true, but the council never clarified it. So people still think keeping us out is helping, when the science says otherwise.”
