SOSSI – Recreating a forest

Shakespear Open Sanctuary now has 19,600 more seedings planted, thanks to the hundreds of supporters who turned up to help get them into the ground. Many thanks to all who came along.

Planting has been going here on every year since 1972, when this first became a regional park. The flat area behind Te Haruhi beach (where the Shakespear family grew their now well-known Whangaparaoa pumpkins) was initially used as the Pohutukawa nursery for many of the other parks, and the trees there now date back to that period. While they look like they’ve been there forever this is only about 40 years ago, so its nice to think that well within your lifetime you can come back and see the seedlings you’ve planted grown into big trees.

The idea is to turn much of the Shakespear Sanctuary back into the kind of coastal forest that used to exist there. The process starts with the development of a long-term plan developed by Council rangers and botanists, then
volunteers watch for the right trees to see when they’re flowering and collect enough seeds to fill the order for that year.  The seeds are then propagated at the on-site SOSSI nursery and grown on to be big enough to plant out in the same year. Manuka and kanuka seeds go off to the Botanic Garden to be grown, while plants for particular areas such as beach plantings are obtained from specialist nurseries.

While the absence of possums and rabbits has helped a lot with regenerating the forest, unfortunately it is also means that we have a lot more weeds coming up. To coincide with Conservation Week we’re planning a public weeding day to remove pampas grass on September 18, so if you’d like another day in the fresh air please come along and help – all welcome, there’s enough weeds for all. (More details on our website, see above).

As well as recreating the original flora, of course this is also creating the ecosystem needed to bring back the original fauna – birds, lizards, insects, fish and maybe even bats. The robins which were recently re-introduced have spread over the Sanctuary; most are still in the Defence Force area where they were released but there are four pairs in Kowhai Glen and two pairs along the Waterfall Gully track – one pair around the waterfall and another near the track-side seat higher up. Just stand and chat for a bit and look carefully around – likely as not they’ll be sitting watching you, but if you’re lucky they’ll come right to your feet.

One pair has been observed mating already so with luck we’ll soon have a lot more of them.

It’s also breeding time for seabirds, so we have cameras out again watching the nesting boxes installed last year. So far lots of activity but no nesting birds as yet.  Cameras are also picking up penguins coming ashore, so we’re hopeful that we may also be filming some penguin chicks soon.