Terrestrial projects

The 2024/2025 year marks the fourth year of weed control in the Rakaia Gorge. This is a 10-year-plus project aimed at controlling the following key weed species:

• Sycamore and cherry throughout the gorge.
• Cotoneaster outliers and further consideration/trialing of cotoneaster strategies for more intensive areas.
• Wilding conifers in or upwind of indigenous vegetation communities and on any key take off sites.
• Smaller infestations of key weeds are not yet widely established.

The scope of work also includes other species, such as cherry laurel, ivy, holly, Chilean flame creeper, blackberry, buddleia, Himalayan honeysuckle, and willows.  

Control effort: The 2024/2025 year produced over 2,500 control hours, which is the second largest control year after FY23/24. Approximately half of the project area has now had one full sweep of weed control.     

Weed survey results: Weed surveying in April 2025 confirmed the largest successful weed control to date and identified a few pockets of sycamore/cherry in the upper section of the gorge as priorities for control this next season.   

Native vegatation recovery: Three years’ worth of photo points are also continuing to show the native vegetation taking off in sites once dominated by weeds.  

Ongoing monitoring: Permanent weed monitoring plots are also showing sycamore seedlings popping up in these sites that have had one round of weed control (as expected). The plots will be useful to guide when follow up control will be required so we can keep ahead of these weeds before they seed and continue to protect the gains made in the Rakaia Gorge.  

Limestone ecosystems are among the rarest ecosystems in New Zealand and support unique species found nowhere else. Randolph Downs is a QEII covenant on an exposure of Mount Brown limestone in the Waipara Gorge. This distinctive limestone site with a coastal microclimate has very high ecological values, providing habitat for 12 at-risk and ‘threatened’ plant species, including the critically endangered Waipara gentian and the endangered limestone aniseed. These species are highly susceptible to competition from exotic weeds.

Work done: The site has seen considerable management effort since 2022 through an ongoing collaborative project between QEII, Department of Conservation (DOC), and ourselves to control weeds, including barberry, old man’s beard, pig’s ear and spur valerian, to protect the habitat of the floristic gems of Mt Brown.

In the 2024/25 financial year, we funded 128.5 hours of on the ground weeding with DOC, employing the use of abseilers and a spray drone to manage risks at the steep site. This effort has seen the covenant progressing towards a healthy native limestone ecosystem.

The 2024/2025 season marks Stage 7 of holly control efforts in Alford Forest, aimed at protecting the beech forest in the Mid Canterbury foothills.

This year, two priority areas were completed.

1. New holly patch discovery: A mature patch of holly was discovered further inland than the previous project work areas, a significant win for the project.
2. Follow-up control: Control work was carried out downstream of this patch to target smaller and more sparse holly in the block in areas that had previously undergone control.

This work builds on a decade of sustained effort with holly now removed from approximately 21 hectares in the foothills forest area.

Future work is still needed to protect and maintain these gains.

Feral deer exclusion is a crucial tool for supporting native forest regeneration.

Covenant of significant scale: This site is a manuka-dominant mixed broadleaved forest over sandstone on a steep hillslope near the Nape Nape coast, with raupō wetlands at the base of the slope. Excluding deer will allow the forest to recover and thrive. Once registered, the covenant will be the largest in the catchment nearly matching the size as the nearby Nape Nape scenic reserve.

Work done: Through funding from the Soil Conservation and Revegetation Programme (SCAR) and biodiversity regional priority projects, we were able to support QEII and the landowners of Le Pine Farm to exclude deer and establish a covenant on 43.5 ha of native bush in the Blythe Valley.