19 Aug 2016

The Bushy Point Restoration Project

From Country Life, 9:13 pm on 19 August 2016

The Otatara Landcare Group is made up of local volunteers who value the natural environment. The group’s main hands-on activity is the Bushy Point Restoration Project, which is working to restore an area of pasture located between two remnants of nationally significant native totara forest on the Otatara Peninsula.

“We entered into an agreement with DOC that we would take over the management of some 15 hectares of grazing area and we would either graze it or sell the grass and use those funds to help replant the area in native trees” says chairperson Barry Smith, who has been living adjacent to Bushy Point for over 20 years.

Since 2000 about 30,000 native plants have gone into the ground thanks to many community planting days and according to Barry, this equates to about 12,000 hours of voluntary work. Managing weeds and animal pests within the large area is also an import task for the 150 or so members of the group.

The restoration project received a planting boost in 2011 from Living Legends, a community conservation project that was set up in 2011 to celebrate and leave a legacy of New Zealand’s hosting of Rugby World Cup.

There were 17 planting projects throughout New Zealand, each dedicated to a regional ‘Rugby Legend’ who was selected in 2011 by their provincial rugby union. In Southland it was former All Black Kevin Laidlaw who hails from Nightcaps.

“Kevin was quite enthusiastic about what we wanted to achieve, but I think the thing that Kevin enjoyed more than anything else was the fact that we were getting young people involved and he felt anything, whether it be rugby, soccer or planting trees, getting young people involved and doing something positive like this was a really good outcome.”

The Otatara Landcare Group has created a public walkway which goes around the Invercargill estuary edge to the forest restoration area where there is a loop walk for all to enjoy.