Dinner raises funds to replace fire-ravaged native tree forest
You’ve heard of farm to table, but what about table to hillside?
A Christchurch bike park is holding a dinner to fund the planting of native trees on the city’s fireravaged Port Hills.
Christchurch Adventure Park is hoping to raise at least $10,000 at its ‘‘Treemendous Dinner’’ on Friday, to plant native trees in its park and surrounding areas.
Park general manager Anne Newman said the park was also looking for finance for a ‘‘mountain coaster’’, which it planned to open next year. Newman said the corporate-style dinner was almost sold out, and showed the sympathy Cantabrians had for those affected by the February 2017 fires.
‘‘The fires have forever changed the landscape here but we are determined to do our bit to ensure that this beautiful area of Christchurch becomes better than ever,’’ she said.
The park was closed for almost a year after fires ripped through more than 2000 hectares of bush and farmland and destroyed 10 houses.
The park’s chairlift and four zip lines had to be replaced.
‘‘When you are an operation based in a forest, and huge sections of that forest are suddenly no longer there, you really grow a new appreciation for what those trees offer,’’ Newman said.
Money raised at the dinner will go to Te Tapuwae o Rakau Trust to source native seedlings. The trust was started in September 2017 to bring a structured approach to the replanting of the Port Hills.
Newman said she hoped the ‘‘mountain coaster’’ would be under construction by early 2019, and it was expected to take six months to build. ‘‘It’s a bit like a luge on rails or a rollercoaster without any vertical loops,’’ she said.
‘‘This was always part of our plan for the park – now we are just doing the numbers in terms of funding and hopefully putting something in by the end of this year,’’ she said.
Tickets to the fundraising dinner are available through the park’s website.