Efforts to “recolonise” Maungataniwha Pine Forest in Wairoa district to natives have received a $15,000 cash boost from the Pan Pac Environmental Trust.

The Hawke's Bay-based Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust (FLRT) started the regeneration project in 2008.

The forest covers an area of 4000 hectares and lies adjacent to the Maungataniwha Native Forest, a 6120-hectare swathe of New Zealand bush straddling the ridge system between the Te Hoe and Waiau rivers in northern Hawke's Bay, bordered to the north by Te Urewera National Park and to the west by the Whirinaki Conservation Forest.

FLRT chairman Simon Hall said the trust was “beyond grateful” to the Pan Pac Environmental Trust for the cash injection, which would go some way to helping to meet the costs of the project.

The work had been funded equally by FLRT and the Department of Conservation between 2015 and 2018, but since then FLRT had been carrying the financial burden of about $70,000 a year on its own.

Pan Pac Forest Products, a leading producer of pine products, established the environmental trust in 2019. It provides funding towards projects that benefit the environment and culture.

“The funding from the trust will be used specifically for clearing the regenerating wilding pines,” FLRT spokesman Peter Heath said...