The cost of the annual coconut palm maintenance program has also “increased significantly”, the report stated. 

During the last audit a decade ago, the price tag for de-nutting and other coconut palm maintenance totalled $250,000.

Although it is unclear yet how much the total cost will be this financial year, it has gone up by at least 39 per cent, the audit shows.

Douglas Shire Mayor Lisa Scomazzon said this week the coconut palm was a much-loved species, but the trees also came with a public-liability threat.

“The risk of injury from being hit by falling coconuts is real, with many stories of near misses,” she said.

“The count has revealed an increase of nearly 9 per cent in the volume of mature coconut palms in high-risk areas requiring maintenance.”

The financial year’s de-nutting program will take place this month and run through until December, with further removals also to be done in May.

The council coconut palm report, released this week, stated maintenance costs included the de-nutting program, as well as removing fallen trees, fronds and fruit from parks, roads, paths, beaches and stormwater drains.

The 2015/16 audit found there were close to 12,000 palms growing in places where falling fruit had the potential to injure someone situated below, but not all of those are considered high risk. Many had not yet started to fruit due to their age.

Douglas Shire had about 8500 fruit-bearing coconuts on council-controlled land at that time, which amounted to about 680,000 nuts being produced every year.

Following the 2015/16 audit, the council vowed to maintain coconut palm numbers across the shire at a relatively steady level, only planting new ones when old ones were removed.

The council’s Coconut Management Action Plan was introduced to reduce its exposure to public liability claims and to protect people from being injured by falling coconuts, fronds and trees.