Our places: Hinewai Reserve
Image: Michael Klajban (Wikpedia CC)
Hinewai Reserve“With the opportunity of income now from this land is carbon sequestration. Stop trying to farm marginal land, don’t even plant exotic forests on it—for timber maybe but certainly not for carbon sequestration; it’s just replacing one ridiculous folly with another ridiculous folly—the scene is wide open for taking this marginal gorse infested hill country and letting it just do what it was doing on a much grander scale, regenerating into native cost on its own. We don’t have to plant this stuff. Nature’s doing it. All we’ve got to do is take away the deleterious things that are stopping it happening, fast.” – Hugh Wilson, Manager (Video 1)
Key actions
- Initially purchased manageable block of marginal farmland that included old-growth forest
- The project is grounded in science
- Communicated plans to the wider community
- Removed only highly invasive and competitive exotic plants and animals where practical
- Successfully demonstrated the role of gorse as a nurse canopy for native forest regeneration
- Created pathways for the public to enjoy the native bush, forest and waterfalls
- Took opportunities to purchase or manage adjoining properties
- Fully documented work so it can be replicated elsewhere
Gorse: fostering the regeneration of native forests
In the early 1800s, vast tracts of New Zealand’s native forests were felled and replaced by farmlands. Gorse, a thorny bush native to Western Europe provided good wind shelter for stock and crops, so it was introduced to here. By 1861 it was recognised as a pest species that was rapidly taking over agricultural land. But it continued to be imported and deliberately grown until the early 1900s. Methods to control it largely failed. Burning or bulldozing it creates the ideal conditions for the seeds—which can lie dormant on the ground for up to 50 years—to germinate.
Today, it’s considered the most costly agricultural pest plant in New Zealand.
But the very attributes that make it much hated plant amongst agriculturalists, also make it a surprisingly good nursery plant for native seedlings. It grows fast in full sunlight. Its thorny bushes help protect native seedlings from grazing livestock and other introduced pests. And being legumous, it fixes nitrogen in the soil. So native seedlings are both fertilised and sheltered. Once native trees are large enough, they shade out the gorse, eventually killing it (Figs. 2 & 3).
This can happen within a decade (Video 1: 15 mins).
How this helps mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change
“You’re not getting pasture back, but you’re getting native forests back, with all its benefits—increased benefits now with all the carbon sequestration benefits—as well as the ecological and biodiversity values that are being fostered this way.” – Hugh Wilson, Manager
- Native plants sequester more carbon dioxide (drawdown) than pasture grass
- Soils supporting natives also sequester far more carbon dioxide than pasture soils
- Restoring biodiversity also restores the co-benefits of life-supporting ecosystem services:
- Cleans drinking water for Akaroa township
- Reduces soil erosion. This is particularly important as weather is predicted to intensify and sea levels are rising. Less erosion means less sediment washed into the ocean where it would otherwise smother and kill coastal and marine ecosystems including salt marshes and seaweed (both of which absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide).
- Increases habitats for endemic taonga species including insects and birds that pollinate plants and enhance soil carbon
- Provides nodes for native plants to spread
- Demonstrates how gorse has successfully been used as a nursery plant
- Raises public awareness of climate change, the role of healthy biodiversity, and how farming practices can and must be changed
- Healthy ecosystems are sources of mahinga kai, helping us become more resilient as the climate changes
“I think the the community is absolutely in support of Hinewai. We realised that the way farming was done over the years had to be changed, and I think what he has done has helped people realise that it can be done in a in a good way.” – Banks Peninsula farmer Bob Masefield, in Fools & Dreamers
“There is great groundswell now of people who are closing off whole gullys because it’s uneconomical land. They’re letting the bush grow back and they’re fencing it off so that nature can be there, so we can have these corridors, and so that the birds can move in, the insects can move in, and things can get from the summit to the sea and over the hills to the next one.” – Hinewai resident Trish Hewitt in Fools & Dreamers
