In 1993 French Canadian Aline d’Aoust immigrated to Aotearoa and purchased a 93 hectare block of pasture land in Mōhua (Golden Bay). Her vision was to live self-sufficiently with little to no impact, and enable the land to regenerate into a healthy native forest.
Located in the Uruwhenua region of Mōhua, the Kānuka hill site backs onto the Kahurangi National Park. This section of the Tākaka valley was traditionally a mixture of lowland podocarp and beech forests, with the beech dominating on the Western hillsides of Uruwhenua. The lands all around Kānuka Hill were burnt in the early 20th century to make way for pasture and a subsequent century of animal grazing. The land is also home to the start of the historic Kill Devil Pack Track. This track was built by gold miners in the 1890s to access the Waingaro and Anatoki gold fields in the next valley over. Today it is a popular tramping and mountain biking trail (managed by DOC) which provides public access into the beautiful Kahurangi National Park.
Kānuka Hill, 1993
By the time Aline arrived, all that remained was degraded pasture land with large infestations of gorse and blackberry. Aline quickly got to work on regenerating the forest. Animal grazing ceased almost immediately and she invited in numerous Woofers and local volunteers to help with initial native plantings and weed management. After this, Aline hired contractors to help with pest and weed control.
Revenue from carbon credit sales is funding pest and weed control in this regenerating forest to enhance forest growth and biodiversity. This focuses on dealing with the encroaching wilding pines as well as the many pigs, goats and possums that make their way onto the land from the neighbouring lands.
Today 51 of the site’s 93 hectares are registered under a QEII Covenant. This is 67% of the land registered under the Emissions Trading Scheme. Aline’s aim is to protect the forest into perpetuity, so she is in the process of enrolling as much land as possible into the ETS and placing what she can under a QEII Covenant.
Walking through the land today it’s hard to imagine that 30 years ago it was just bare pasture and gorse. Mamaku, ponga, kānuka and numerous broadleaves dominate the canopy while young beech and podocarps have started to make their way up through the understory of ferns and coprosmas. With the songs of riroriro, pīwakawaka, tūī and korimako echoing from tree to tree, there is a real sense of abundance and regeneration on the land.
To read more about the Kānuka Hill project, head to https://ekos.co.nz/projects-kanuka-hill