The Queenstown Lakes District Council is planning several projects for January which will involve felling unsafe trees between Queenstown and Arrowtown.
One of the projects is along the lower 2km of Coronet Peak Rd, which leads up to the skifield.
Council network operations engineer Ian Marshall said trees in the area had been identified as unsafe and harboured wilding pines, and they also caused problems on the road in winter.
"The trees in the area create shading, which adds to the ice issues on the road," he said.
"There are a number of large pine trees, along with thousands of small trees and seedlings, which need to be removed before they become large trees and naturally more complicated and costly to remove."
The sale of the wood would cover some of the cost of clearing the area.
Mr Marshall estimated the final cost would be $20,000, plus the cost of resealing the 2km stretch of road.
In a project scheduled to start in mid-January, several large poplar trees along Malaghans Rd would be removed between the Arrowtown Lake Hayes Rd intersection and the entrance to Remarkable Vets, near Millbrook Resort.
The trees would be removed to make room for widening the road, but Mr Marshall said those on the north side of Malaghans Rd, between Manse Rd and a point about 100m west of the Millbrook entrance, were likely to become a safety issue.
The poplar trees further west of this point would be retained, he said.
The removal of the trees along Malaghans Rd would not need to be tendered, as it was already covered by the $1 million budget for the upgrade of this section of the road.
