Thousands of dollars’ worth of plants and 10 years work by volunteers and schoolkids on the scenic Coastal Walkway have gone up in smoke due to a suspected act of carelessness.

A few hundred square metres, which included the habitat of native wildlife, just north of Te Rewa Rewa Bridge was left a blackened and smouldering early on Thursday after a fire believed to have been started overnight by an alleged discarded cigarette butt.

“Firefighters did a fantastic job containing the blaze but this is massively disappointing, especially for the volunteers and tamariki who put in the hard mahi over the last decade to protect and enhance this fragile sand dune environment by planting thousands of native plants in the Living Legends area, and it’s a stark reminder of how careful we need to be in this dry, hot weather,” said NPDC External Relations Manager Jacqueline Baker.

“We manage about 1,600 hectares of parks and 82km of walkways and we rely on hundreds of volunteers to help keep these areas looking beautiful. The fire has destroyed about 1,000 plants that were part of a valuable habitat for nesting shorebirds like the endangered native dotterel and we’re looking at a cost to ratepayers of about $20k.”

New planting may begin in autumn subject to budget/logistics and it’s expected to take about seven years for the new plants to become fully established.

Fire and Emergency New Zealand are conducting a full investigation into the incident.

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