Restoring our forest
The goal of our forest restoration programme is to have key natural processes operating in the sanctuary with minimal intervention. Our restoration programme focuses on removing exotic weeds and animal pests and reintroducing native plant and animal species.
Our forest will never be exactly the same as before because:
- We don't know with any precision what was here before us
- There have been some extinctions in the indigenous biota
- Some exotic biota will never be eradicated permanently (e.g. weeds, birds and insect pests)
- The valley has suffered from a number of catastrophic occurences, which have permanently altered the forest ecosystem - forest fires, farming and introduction of animal and plant pests
- The fenced sanctuary will be a much more closed ecosystem (like an island) than it would have been when it was a small part of a huge unbroken ecosystem.
We can only try and take out the most disruptive elements (animal and plant pests) and put back as many of the indigenous elements as possible and watch and see what happens!
A 500-year journey of restoration
We believe it will take 500 years for the restoration of the sanctuary. This amount of time is based on:
- Removing exotic trees like pine trees and replacing them with native vegetation before more natural soil composition and processes can result
- Forest giants like rata, rimu and miro are rare or missing. It will be a long time before the small trees being planted now reach maturity and natural regeneration of these species is occuring
- The restoration of native forest in the sanctuary will provide habitat for the re-establishment of wildlife species that have disappeared. This is a mutually beneficial relationship as several of our most important tree species (such as tawa and miro) rely almost entirely on birds for transport of their seed and others rely on birds and lizards for pollination.