More than 20 public trees were vandalised so badly in the year to November they had to be removed, Tauranga City Council figures show.

But trees that survived being poisoned or damaged are not included in the figures.

From November 2023 to November 2024, Arbor Care contractors had to remove eight trees in Welcome Bay, one in Gate Pa, seven in Pāpāmoa, one in Tauranga, two in Ōtūmoetai and three in Mount Maunganui.

Council arboricultural and environmental specialist Richie Goldstone said people usually damaged public trees for better views and to eliminate debris on their property.

“A tree might get cut in half but because they provide a habitat when they’re cut, they are left in situ,” he said.

This often happened to pōhutukawa trees in Tauranga, Goldstone said.

Richie Goldstone and Mark Armistead from Tauranga City Council's urban foresters team say the community should love trees because they are public assets. Photo / Aleyna Martinez

Council team leader of urban foresters Mark Armistead said topping trees for views was bad for them.

“These are still live trees. Lots of trees get topped for people’s views.

“When you chop a tree in half, it wants to react and puts out a lot of regrowth. It’s not good for the tree.

“Those ones still survive so they don’t get recorded,” Armistead said.

He said a repercussion for people found guilty of poisoning or cutting trees was the enforcement of payment for their removal.

“We give them a list of contractors they can use, and if they don’t use Arbor Care and they use someone else, then they don’t get recorded.

“They’re the only people [who] can use our internal system, [which] records all that data.

“So we know there’s a lot more out there that don’t get recorded,” he said.

The council counted trees as individual assets, and shrubs like gardens and revegetation were counted together as a group within a surrounding polygon area on maps.

Armistead said they developed tree vandalism signs for Tauranga about two years ago and wanted to “make a difference in people’s mentality” towards trees.

“If we think it’s intentional, we’ll go out and put the signs up pretty quick, and we often leave a tree as well.

“It’s education, but we just want people to be aware that we are looking and we’re aware that this stuff’s going on.

“And then we also want other members of the public to see it and feel, ‘Well, that’s not acceptable’.

“This is really immature and poor behaviour [from] people – to just think they can walk out and damage public property.

“Other people value and treasure the trees they have in the streets, and they bring a lot of amenity and value.

“When they’re affected by someone who’s just got some selfish reason [for wanting to] go and damage that public property, it’s disappointing,” Armistead said.

It’s about a collective approach to what’s acceptable, he said.

“Trees will hold on for a while. Like, they’ll resist and battle and try to carry on through and recover from damage from whatever it is, topping or poison.

“So we’ll leave them while they’re safe.

“As soon as they become unstable, we’ll remove them, but we’ll leave them there so people can see the sign and they can see this tree that is obviously struggling.

“It’s so they can put two and two together and decide whether they think that’s acceptable or not.”

Armistead wanted people to know if they saw trees being damaged, they could call the police.

“They can hopefully take some action, because it is wilful damage to public property,” he said.