Coastal Forest Reserves on Waiheke Island

Forest and Bird, Issue 303, 1 February 2002, Page 43

Coastal Forest Reserves on Waiheke Island

PETER WHITE

visits the home of Hauraki Islands branch

Hoe and Bird’s three reserves on Waiheke, near Auckland, are preserving a little of the original coastal forest which once coverd much of this offshore island. While Waiheke has a growing suburban population, the island is still free of possums and therefore has an environment where trees can flourish without being eaten. The old forests of Waiheke Island were largely cleared in the 1800s making these reserves an important reminder of what the coastal forests were like before settlement. The giant kauri which once grew down to the water’s edge were milled for shipbuilding, and later housing. Lighter forest and regenerating patches long supplied Auckland with firewood. Today, Hauraki Islands Forest and Bird manages two reserves that protect significant remnants of the old coastal forest and is also revegetating another 17 hectares of erosionscarred pasture on hillside land. (See Atawhai Whenua Reserve featured in Forest & Bird August 2000.) The Onetangi Reserve stands at the back of Onetangi bay and village, with a Forest and Bird lodge just across the road. The 50-hectare Onetangi Reserve was purchased in 1962 to save it from the effects of overgrazing and threatened logging. It consists of taraire-pohutukawa

forest with puriri, rewarewa, kohekohe, matai, tawa, kauri, kanuka, nikau, kahikatea and a hybrid of pohutukawa-northern rata. Onetangi Reserve is one of the largest areas of intact forest on the northern coast of the island. An internal loop-track system takes a leisurely two hours to traverse the major vegetation types in the reserve and can be accessed from five entrances. At various points the track crosses streams containing native fish. On the southern ridge Forest and Bird has constructed a platform from which to view a surviving grove of large kauri. Pohutukawa Ridge, named for its impressive stand of pohutukawa, runs east-west into the centre of the reserve and provides extensive views over the reserve and Onetangi Bay to Auckland’s North Shore. For years the Hauraki Islands Forest and Bird branch has battled a host of introduced plant pests here, mainly woolly nightshade, Japanese honeysuckle, wandering jew and climbing asparagus. Now revegetation is being undertaken in parts of the reserve, particularly Pohutukawa Ridge. The 35-hectare Te HaahiGoodwin Reserve, overlooking Te Matuku Bay in the eastern end of the island, has high natural character and species diversity and adjoins the

Society’s proposed Matuku Bay marine reserve. Harold Goodwin gifted the largest part of the reserve in 1979 and sold the much smaller ‘School Block’ — the site of the early settlers’ school — to the Society in 1988. The Te Haahi (Church) Block, previously

owned by the Anglican Church, was purchased as an addition to the reserve in 1983. The ridges and upper slopes are dominated by forests of kauri, tanekaha, manuka, kanuka, mapou, Leucopogon fasciculatus and Olearia furfuracea. This surrounds gullies containing a forest of kohekohe, taraire, nikau and ponga with occasional puriri and emergent kauri. There are

some very large kauri and kohekohe in the upper parts of the reserve. The species list includes a large number of mosses, orchids, fungi, ferns and fern allies. These forests are part of a nationally significant "‘ecotone sequence’ extending from hillside forests

through freshwater and saline wetlands to the mudflats of Te Matuku Bay. The Te Haahi-Goodwin Reserve has no tracks but the Forest and Bird ranger is always willing to take people on a guided tour. — PETER WHITE, is reporting to the national executive on the Society’s reserves and their management.