Over recent years a Wellington based team has enjoyed a few days each August planting trees at Project Rameka. But there is more to the success of our revegetation work than planting. Growing conditions are great at Project Rameka, but not only for our trees. Also, for the grass and weeds competing for sunlight with the young trees. So over 3 days in late November Erika, Terry, Merryn, John, Winnie, Davey and Stuart released a few thousand young trees from the weeds, letting in the light for further growth.

It was great to see how successful our recent years of planting had been with survival rates in the high 90s percent. We enjoyed spending time at Rameka at a different time of the year; warmer but certainly not drier!

Project Rameka has some 120 traps controlling predators and giving the birdlife a chance. Paul Kilgour continues to do a great job clearing and maintaining those traps each month. Thank you, Paul!

But November/December Paul was away doing more good work in the Catlins, so we enjoyed a few hours walking the tracks and clearing the traps. Those tracks certainly took a hammering in the August rainstorm. It was great to see all the hard work that had taken place to reopen Great Expectations. This included building a new bridge and rerouting a section of track. Well done track builders!

Looking forward to our next trip to Rameka.