A merry band of four guerrilla sycamore assassins went after a stretch of the trees along State Highway 88 this week.
The group - Dunedin City councillor Aaron Hawkins, Chalmers Community Board chairman Steve Walker, former minister for the environment Marian Hobbs and conservationist Matt Thomson - were all there in their capacities as members of the West Harbour Beautification Trust.
The trustees were going after sycamore growth along the highway, they said, because the trees choked native bush, blocked the view of the harbour and their shading made the road icy in winter.
Mr Walker first established the trust, in part, to deal with the problem of the sycamore, or, as Ms Hobbs called it, the ''incomer''.
''If we let this go on for ages and ages and ages, then it's going to take a hell of a lot of money to remove it ... For god's sake, use your money wisely, use my ratepayer's money wisely. Do this now, before it becomes a problem,'' she said.
''It can be done very easily.''
The trustees - and Mr Walker in particular - are not newcomers to this issue.
''We've been advocating to council for the last nine years,'' he said.
''Here we are, nine years later, no plan exists [to deal with the sycamores].''
''In the Town Belt in central Dunedin, they do have a sycamore removal programme - why don't we have one?''
Mr Hawkins said agencies - including the DCC - had continuously passed the buck on dealing with the sycamore problem.
''We've had a lot of local and central government agencies pointing the finger at each other. Meanwhile, nothing gets done.''
''I would like to think that the city council - that we could take an active lead in convening [to reach a solution] - but it's also clear that no single agency involved will be able to fix this on their own.''
''Because of the way [the sycamore] spreads so prolifically, you have to deal with it across the board,'' Mr Hawkins said.
''We can cut down this entire stretch today, but that's not going to fix the problem. You can't deal with it in isolation. All of the agencies that have a regulatory or land ownership role in this problem need to be involved in fixing it.''
That would include the DCC, the Otago Regional Council, KiwiRail, Ontrack, and the New Zealand Transport Agency, he said.
After chopping down each tree, the trustees applied red-tinted poison to the stumps so the trees would not regrow, and then carried the trees across the road to add them to a pile of yellowing leaves and slender branches.
''This is an asset worth protecting,'' Mr Hawkins added, looking out at the harbour, ''and one of the best ways that we can do that is to start taking the sycamore problem more seriously than we have done.''
