Aboriculture lecturer Jerry Lynch has a team of nine students in North Otago this week to work on about 50 trees from Kakanui on the coast through the Kakanui Valley to Livingstone.
"It's a win-win for both of us," he said.
The Memorial Oaks Committee is getting the work done for nothing and the students are getting hands-on experience.
It will be the first major attention some of the oaks have received since they were planted.
Mr Lynch worked as an arborist in North Otago and felt the memorial oaks in rural areas were neglected.
Work had been done on Oamaru's trees, but not those growing in the country.
When he was appointed lecturer at Otago Polytechnic, he approached the committee with the idea of using the oaks as a teaching tool, while providing care for the trees.
Work ranges from trimming and reshaping trees around power lines to removing dead wood, storm damage and clearing them back from paddocks and roads.
This year, work will be done on memorial oaks in the Hampden-Herbert-Kakanui-Maheno and Kakanui Valley area.
Next year, it was planned to work on the oaks in the Waitaki Valley.
Acorns from the memorial oaks are being collected, and the students will grow them to produce new trees which could be used to replace some of those which disappeared.
The Memorial Oaks Committee was set up in 1991 to protect and preserve the remaining trees.
Since then it has compiled a history of the trees and mapped all the remaining ones.
It has also produced concrete crosses to name oaks which have lost their original brass plaques.
The results of their endeavours can be seen along Severn St on State Highway 1.
Committee chairman Rob Douglas said oaks in the town had been cared for, but those in the country neglected.
The help of the polytechnic students was welcome, but he appealed for people to make donations to offset the incidental costs of equipment and bri1nging them to North Otago.
Memorial Oaks
• Planted to commemorate North Otago soldiers killed in World War 1.
• Radiated in a star from the Junction, through Oamaru, to Katiki, Livingstone, Kurow and Waitaki Bridge.
• Memorial oaks dedicated September 11, 1919, by Admiral Lord Jellicoe.
• Centre oak is dedicated to Victoria Cross recipient Donald Forrester Brown.
• Each oak had a brass plaque naming the soldier it represents.
• About 400 trees planted originally; about 220 remain.
