November 25, 2019
Authority seeks to clear protest log from Owairaka
Auckland’s Tūpuna Maunga Authority is challenging opponents of its native forest restoration programme on Ōwairaka-Mount Albert to front up.
It is holding a whakawātea or clearance ceremony on the maunga on Thursday followed by a pōwhiri and hui at which people will be able to ask questions.
Authority chair Paul Majurey says since a group started blocking access to the maunga by contractors hired to clear pest trees, three attempts to set up a meeting have been rejected.
He says the reasons for the protest also seem to have unravelled once the Tree Council and Forest and Bird voiced their support for the work.
"There’s a question of mana here in terms of a treaty settlement that was well supported, had the cloak of legislation and multilateral political support for the settlement and here you have a group that is really trying to attack and undermine and try to prevent the mana of these treaty settlement arrangements," Mr Majurey says.
The Tūpuna Maunga Authority is a co-governance group involving both mana whenua and council.
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