All that glitters
Project Gold is an ambitious project to restore populations of New Zealand’s iconic kowhai¯ to the Otago region.
is undergoing its second great gold rush but this time the gold is being returned to the land rather than being extracted.
Project Gold began as a Department of Conservation initiative in 2011 with the aim of restoring populations of one of the region’s (and New Zealand’s) most iconic species, the k¯owhai.
“Basically, people had almost forgotten they existed in Central Otago because there were so few remnant ones,” recalls Jo Wakelin, principal lecturer in horticulture at Otago Polytechnic’s central campus in Cromwell, and one of the project’s keenest supporters.
Coincidentally, at the same time as the project was announced by its creator, now-retired DOC ranger John Barkla, Jo was teaching her students propagation using wild k¯owhai seeds collected from the local remnant trees. “John heard about us and we came together,” Jo recalls.
“DOC did a lovely video to get the public interested again. We were teaching primary school groups how to propagate them, we did a k¯owhai roadshow with
DOC in the Wakatipu conservancy, around all the local primary schools and got them really engaged.
DOC put together propagation packs and we really got landholders and volunteer groups interested in replanting them.”
Community engagement has been key to the project’s success. “To this day, we at the polytechnic are propagating huge numbers of k¯owhai. What I started doing was getting various groups who wanted them to actually collect their own wild seeds,” Jo says.
“We had a lovely relationship with some people in Lawrence who sent us a great box of pods which the students shelled and scarified, and grew them and they went back to Lawrence for a golden entrance to the town. The Waipiata community also gathered seed from relic trees in their hills, and the trees the students grew from these went back to families and farms in the Waipiata area.”
Jo says many Central Otago vineyards are planting and maintaining species to increase local biodiversity, and cites the case of Te Kano vineyard where she discovered a very old k¯owhai growing on a nearby hill. “This beautiful gnarly old man tree has formed the theme for the wine marketing campaign. We’ve propagated well over 1000 trees from it, which they have planted in parts of the vineyard where they are restoring native vegetation.”
While there are eight species of k¯owhai in New Zealand, only Sophora microphylla grows naturally in Otago. Jo says it is important to replant local provenance to maintain the distinctiveness
“People had almost forgotten that kowhai¯ existed in Central Otago, because there were so few remnant ones,” says Lake Dunstan-based horticulturist Jo Wakelin.
of local flora. Local native plants are best suited to local conditions and typically grow better than those sourced elsewhere. Jo gives as example k¯owhai growing naturally in Central Otago typically flower within seven years of sowing seed, while ones from coastal Otago can take 15 years or more when grown inland.
While k¯owhai is getting all the attention, Project Gold is actually just one part of DOC’s conservation management strategy.
The key focus is to encourage reforestation of the region’s most distinctive ecological system, grey shrublands, according to Rhiannon McLean, DOC ranger for the Queenstown Wakatipu area.
“Once upon a time, the whole of the Wakatipu Basin would have been grey shrublands, with olearia, and other shrubby plants such as matagouri, mingimingi and k¯owhai,” Rhiannon explains.
“Over time, much of it has been lost, replaced with grass and pastures, and very little is left apart from alpine areas and reserves. It’s only really found in more remote areas now.”
The shrublands are home to a variety of lizards and small birds, prey for the at-risk eastern
New Zealand falcon, or k¯arearea, and tend to be in an alpine environment with a harsh climate and rocky soils.
Fire, farming and rabbits have been the leading causes of destruction of the shrublands and k¯owhai; and rabbits remain the main bane of reforesters. Trees as old as eight have been ring-barked by rabbits, Rhiannon says.
A tiny upside to the rabbit problem is that weeds growing around trees tend to act as a deterrent to rabbits, so unless they are choking the plants, the weeds are left alone.
The whole project has been extremely rewarding, concludes Jo. “The sight in September is glorious, and the bellbirds are coming back. To get a bellbird back in this harsh landscape is fabulous.”