Kaweka Forest Park, Saturday 18 June 2022
Banner Photo: L to R, Julia, Alison, Di and Sue. Photo by Graham
There’s a quiet battle being waged in the Kawekas, and it will probably go on for years. A group of volunteers are taking on a formidable enemy: the wilding pine.
Wilding pines are as tough as ‘forever chemicals’. Their seeds can lie dormant for decades before springing into life, to stifle native flora. As elsewhere across New Zealand, they are rampant in the Kaweka Range.
The local effort springs from an idea created by a group of like-minded conservationists wanting to help the Department of Conservation with ongoing wilding pine control (primarily Pinus Contorta) in the Kaweka Forest Park. Volunteers tackle smaller trees with handsaws, applying herbicide to stumps and using hand-pulling techniques on saplings. The community group’s work is complementary to other ongoing pine control in the forest park, previously undertaken under the National Wilding Pine Programme. DoC allocated the group an area near The Lakes at Kuripaponga, which had larger trees aerially spayed between 2019 and 2021, with ground control done by a contractor in 2020.
In the latest expedition on 18 June, members of the Napier Tramping Club were guided by Graham Leech, a member of the Hawke’s Bay Wilding Pines Community Group.
Julia, Di, Sue and Alison donned over-trousers to keep out the cold and wet, and headed into the regenerating kanuka scrub. Says Julia: “We planned to walk in a line together in a certain direction, but the terrain and scrub soon made this difficult. We kept within yelling distance though, with cries of ‘I’ve got one, no two, no three’.
“We found wilding pines of all sizes from tiny seedlings to trees with a diameter of 15cm. Above that size, we GPS-recorded the location as they were too difficult to saw by hand”.
The group bush-bashed through the scrub, finding occasional pines amongst it and often emerging into small clearings, where they found pines in huge numbers – sometimes 30 or more.
But over lunch near the lake edge, they noticed how the native bush can quickly recover, if given the chance.
The day’s final tally was 1,300 pines. Since the battle began some months ago, the group’s total kill has reached 4,410 from 138 hours of volunteer time. These figures are reported back to DoC.
Graham says he can see a big difference since the start of the effort. Other parts of the Kaweka Range have been sprayed but are in desperate need of attention. Perhaps, in time, they’ll get the Hawke’s Bay Wilding Pine Community Group treatment.
If you would like to join the campaign, or just learn more about it, contact Graham Leech at wildingpine@afoot.co.nz or visit www.afoot.co.nz/conservation for more information and future volunteer dates.
For more information on the Wilding Pine Control Strategy: https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/weeds/common-weeds/wilding-conifers/
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