A 3m macrocarpa picnic table at a Department of Conservation campground in Wairarapa was installed for just two days before most of it was sawn off and stolen.<\/p>\n
The table, put in at Bucks Road Campsite west of Greytown on Tuesday, was found on Thursday with around 2.4m missing \u2013 an amount of dressed wood worth an estimated $4000.<\/p>\n
Department of Conservation principal ranger Briggs Pilkington said the theft was “hugely disappointing” and “disheartening” for staff and volunteers who worked on the table.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019ve been working with the community to improve the facilities at this site, and a significant funding donation has been put into the campground upgrade by the community.<\/p>\n
“Then we go out to finish the table to find someone with a chainsaw and a bad attitude ruined it for everyone. This is why we can\u2019t have nice things.”<\/p>\n
Pilkington said it was the latest in a string of thefts of materials from Wairarapa conservation sites, with corrugated iron stolen from a shelter at Western Lake Reserve earlier this year.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s not even about the cost, really, it\u2019s that they\u2019ve stolen from the community,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This wasn\u2019t a purchased table; the locals built that table themselves, and it wasn\u2019t even finished. This was hard work, and means we have to really think about what we do in the future.”<\/p>\n
Police confirmed receiving a report of the theft.<\/p>\n
“Anyone with any information should call 105 or go online to 105.police.govt.nz and quote reference number OR-2321290N,” a police spokesperson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 3m macrocarpa picnic table at a Department of Conservation campground in Wairarapa was installed for just two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1389,67,273,42,43,40,38,41,39,52],"class_list":["post-168932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-conservation","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-environment","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}