Media release: Cash injection for ‘Pine to natives’ forest conversion

The country’s largest ‘pine to natives’ forest conversion project has been given a $15,000 cash injection by a leading producer of radiata pine products. The initiative by Hawke’s Bay-based Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust (FLRT) is converting the former Maungataniwha Pine Forest into 4,000 hectares of regenerating native forest and now has the financial backing of the Pan Pac Environmental Trust.

The land lies adjacent to the Maungataniwha Native Forest, a 6,120-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.

Eighty years ago, the land was covered in mature native forest full of mistletoe, kiwi, kokako and kaka. The mature podocarps were logged and in the 1980s some 4,000 hectares were clear-felled and burnt for the planting of pine trees.

FLRT was established in 2006 to provide direction and funding for the restoration of threatened species of native fauna and flora in forests within the Central North Island. In 2018, it took control of the fully harvested block from Matariki Forests, which had held the licence to log the pine.

The aim is to re-vegetate the area with indigenous forest. There is sufficient native species seed in the soil to enable natural regeneration but the major challenge, and cost, is the elimination of regenerating pine seedlings which crowd out the slower growing native forest species.

It takes a decade to clear logged land of wilding pines completely and to get it to the point where it can be described as fully regenerated. During this time the land is nurtured, treated and monitored by the FLRT to ensure that the species they expect to appear do so.

About a third of the area, 1,400 hectares, can now be described as clear of regenerating pines and successfully regenerated with native species.

Read the full article at the Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust website

Cash injection for ‘Pine to natives’ forest conversion project