The Sutherland Bequests

Forest and Bird, Issue 300, 1 May 2001, Page 40

The Sutherland Bequests

On August 4, 1967 Archibald Sutherland died, leaving most of his money and around 1164 hectares of land to seven charitable organisations. Two separate blocks of forest, now known as the Sutherland reserves, went to Forest and Bird, with the rest of the land being sold at public auction. Both reserves were transferred

to the Society in 1970, the Sutherland Turakina block only after a subdivision of the original block enabled a land exchange of some open pasture for two areas of native and exotic. forest . left out of the bequest. A generous endowment, the ‘Sutherland Bequest}; was also left for the future development, upkeep and maintenance of the two reserves. The 60-hectare Sutherland Turakina Reserve is situated to the north of Marton at the junction of Mangahoe and Turakina Valley Roads. The reserve is significant in that it is one of the few remaining areas of indigenous forest associated with a river terrace in the Rangitikei ecological region. It is predominantly kahikatea forest with matai, rimu, hinau and occasional totara over a subcanopy of tawa and some titoki in the central portions of the reserve. There are pockets dominated by kanuka and a smaller area on the other side of Turakina Valley Road contains titoki-tawa forest. It represents the finest remnant of plains forest in the Turakina area, a representative podocarp forest. Most of the remaining forest areas in the region are confined to river valleys that are too steep or inaccessible for logging or farming.

The 12-hectare Sutherland Mangahoe Reserve is situated five kilometres to the east on Mangahoe Rd. Its vegetation consists mainly of kahikatea forest rising over tawa. The kahikatea ranges from more mature trees at the southern end to younger and quite densely-packed trees at the northern end. The reserve also has many particularly fine totara. Sutherland Mangahoe contains an internal circular track leading off from Mangahoe Rd and crossing the Mangahowhi Stream via a wooden bridge. Sutherland Turakina has a more extensive colour-coded track network, that provides visitors with walks ranging from 20 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes.