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Flagstaff Restoration Kereru
Rehabilitation Moore's
Bush Restoration
Otanomomo Weed Eradication Quarantine
Island Restoration Wilding
Tree Control
Flagstaff Silver Beech Restoration
This article by Dunedin Branch Vice-Chairperson KEN MASON appeared in the Forest and Bird magazine, February 2003.
In 1990 the Otago Tramping and Mountaineering Club clearfelled four hectares of pine plantation on its 40-hectare 'Ben Rudd' property. Here, high on Dunedin's beloved Flagstaff Hill, 200 silver beech were trial planted amongst the pine stumps.
Spurred on by the trial's success the club founded its Ben Rudd Management Trust, beginning regular beech plantings in 2000 with the idea of creating a silver-beech ecosystem.
At an exposed 600 metres the trees have grown a little bushy, So trees behind the forest edges are being form-pruned to develop fewer individual stems and a higher canopy.
Another 5000 exotic trees were dropped in 2001. the bulk of the property is now returning to kanuka and broadleaf. One area is having its narrow-leaved snowgrass association restored, including celmisia and speargrass reintroductions. The property is to covenanted with the QE II National Trust.
Ben Rudd beech seedlings are sourced from Flagstaff Creek, some 2.3 kilometres away on Three Mile Hill. This is the nearest silver beech forest to Dunedin, and the next for restoration.
Sadly, the 1970s pine plantations were expanded around Flagstaff Creek at the expense of tall relict silver-beech forest and its healthy South Island robin population. Ecology Action, a former Otago University-based group, found out in time to save fragments. Unsympathetic plantation logging, roading and windthrow took a further toll on the beech.
By 1998, however, there was a change within the Dunedin City Council's new forestry enterprise, City Forests Ltd. Now, City Forests, with Dunedin Forest and Bird and the tertiary group Students for Environmental Action, are involved in a joint silver-beech forest restoration project.
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stand of silver beech after treatment, which included intensive weed control and planting. |
Further project definition and expansion is occurring, as the pruning thinning and harvesting of plantation trees takes place.
Beech regeneration is very light-demanding. With the beech forest's fragmentation the remnants were laid open to invasion by both exotic and native broadleaved species.
Work to date had focussed on removing exotic trees which are either competing with silver-beech saplings and seedlings, or preventing regeneration. Where native broadleaved species are doing the same they are either being thinned or removed. Blackberry is being cleared and replaced by beech.
The chainsaws of Dunedin Forest and Bird's wilding tree group have removed the larger exotic trees.
This project has helped City Forests Ltd gain Forest Stewardship Council certification for meeting environmentally and socially responsible forest-management practices. FSC certification adds to the plantation's marketable value. Even higher certification is sought.
By managing competing exotic and native trees, a silver-beech ecosystem is being given a future, and a chance to reclaim some of its former extent. Hopefully, the robins will also benefit.
For more information
on silver beech restoration at Flagstaff contact Ken Mason,
03-476-7100 kdmason@xtra.co.nz
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