LETTER FROM WENDY GRAY, -SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF WESTERN SPRINGS FOREST! Please support them as they supported SAVE Chamberlain Park

Dear Friends,

Over the last year we have had the Resource Consent Decision, which refused on a technicality to consider our expert arborist evidence demonstrating that Council's arborist report was unsafe, merely opinion and assumption, did not follow best practice, and had never done a tree by tree assessment.

We then created the Society for the Protection of Western Springs Forest and appealed the Resource Consent to the Environment Court which came to a mediated settlement. Council would not budge from their discredited arboricultural report despite the Society's 3 arboricultural experts who demonstrated through arboricultural best practice and a tree by tree assessment that the Western Springs Native Forest is a normal ageing forest. The pine trees are in fact in good health and the Forest is 94% low-medium risk, which is more than acceptable.

Council has never conducted a health and safety risk assessment of the Forest yet they rely upon vague and serious assertions of health and safety to both close the Forest and to justify their decisions and recommendations that there must be full-stand removal.

The removal of this Forest will be a travesty if it happens.

We are therefore asking you to do another round of getting your friends to sign this petition.

We are going to present it to the Waitemata Local Board on Tuesday 18 February next week. Come along and support us.

See what you can do!

Thank you for signing the petition Save Western Springs Native Forest, can you help spread the word by forwarding the link below to your friends?

https://www.toko.org.nz/petitions/save-western-springs-native-forest

Thanks for hanging in there with us.

Wendy Gray