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.

The Code Red storm made just getting to Rameka a challenge. Roads were closed, flights were cancelled, and the ground floor of the bach we had booked was flooded.

To get to Rameka, we had to walk 5 km each way, and on the first day, we saw the extent of the damage. One huge slip had taken out four bridges, closing Great Expectations and washing hundreds of trees away. Another slip had closed The Odyssey.

Last Sunday, we held a work party, but it was really hard to know what to do. The damage to Great Expectations was so severe, with a new gulch having been formed, and a muddy sludge dumped along the sides. At least the historic Rameka Track was in remarkably good condition.

It wasn’t until the third day that our fortunes turned and spirits began to lift. We carried 200 trees up and planted them in fine weather. On the same day, Ricky Ward managed, somehow, to drive another 800 trees up to the project via a private farm track. We were making real progress.

We kept chipping away, planting one or two hundred trees a day. And Fulton Hogan were also busy repairing the road. Finally, on our last day (Saturday) the road was open, and just in time for our final big work party.

Twenty-two people turned up and the last 450 out of 1,000 trees were planted and guarded. A big thanks to Alison, Grant, Bob, Chris, Suzy, Mike, Andrew, Bevan, Duncan (Mountford) Glenda, Mark, Maryann, Will and Kerry.

Also a special thanks to Paul Kilgour who put heaps of effort into planting and guarding trees over the week, even staying at Rameka two nights.

And most of all, the crew who took a week off work and returned home, tired, fit and happy today: Nicola and Richard, Geoff, Justine and Duncan and Bronnie and Jonathan.

One of the observations Jonathan had at the end of the week was this. By restoring the land over time, the land has begun restoring us.

On this trip, Bronnie and Jonathan were joined by Simon and Penny, with a guest appearance by Garth Baker. During our stay, we were joined by several Nelson and Golden Bay locals to give the lower half of Great Expectations some TLC. It should be running sweet now.

We’ve often described Project Rameka as a local solution to a global problem. The problem started with the industrial age and a new era in human civilisation that has been fuelled by burning an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuels. And our local solution – Project Rameka – started in May 2008 when Bronnie Wall and I bought 48 hectares of land in the Rameka Valley to create a carbon sink.

Project Rameka has grown since then: the area of land, the size of the trees, the number of native species. The track network has grown, too, and there are now 10 km of trails used by runners, walkers and mountain bikers every day.

But this track network is not only used for exercise. The local inhabitants are very lucky that the tracks are also regularly visited by kaitiaki or guardians. These guardians protect and enhance the environment at Rameka. They travel the length of the project, trapping introduced predators such as stoats and rats. They also control invasive weeds, like old man’s beard and banana passionfruit, which would otherwise smother native trees, and release young seedlings too. This important work has allowed native species at Rameka to recover and, in some cases, thrive.

Here is a snippet of a heartwarming report from two of these guardians – Fil and Albie Burgers – written on a hot afternoon just a few days before Christmas. After rebaiting all their stoat traps, they sent us an update, writing:

“We caught NOTHING, ZILTCH, ZERO. Plenty of birdsong, the usual riroriro [grey warbler], Californian quail, weka, a kereru, piwakawaka, korimako and several tui. There’s a favourite spot where we stop for a cuppa – the point where Great Expectations first emerges from the pines and there are beaut views across to Farewell Spit. We used to call it “Rat Corner” and set up five traps pretty close to each other as there was a plague of rats there. However, we haven’t caught any rats there for months and almost always see at least one tui there, very likely nesting nearby, so it’s now called “Tui Terrace”.”

Paul Kilgour (author of the memoir Gone Bush) is another stalwart trapper and often sends in reports of kea, weka, and kōmiromiro (tomtits) entertaining him, along with other animals such as mountain bikers and runners, who are having fun and enjoying the regenerating forest at Rameka.

Most of the traps have been replaced over the last year, thanks to GB MENZSHED and funds from the Ramaka Trust. The Trust earns money each year from the sale of carbon credits via EKOS, and many of these credits are actually sold to Golden Bay businesses who want to be carbon neutral and are keen to support a local project like ours.

“It’s all we’ve dreamed of” is how our pest control officer, Matt Shoult, recently described the progress at Rameka. Matt is paid to work two days a week at the project, dealing mostly to possums, pigs and invasive weeds. The results are impressive, and Matt easily reels off a long list of the birds he’s seen at Rameka, which include kea ripping into pine trunks for grubs and inquisitive weka stalking him all over the project. Matt also runs through a list of seedlings he’s spotted sprouting on the forest floor: toro, marble leaf, kaikōmako, mātai, kahikatea, porokaiwhiri (pigeonwood), lacebark and tōtara.

In some areas, however, long grass is too thick for native seedlings to push through, and they can’t get established. So, every year, we target an area for tree planting. Last August, 40 volunteers planted 1,000 trees, and the weather has been so favourable that virtually all those seedlings have survived – and thrived. The most common trees we put in the ground are puahou (five finger), akeake, makamako (wineberry), beech, toro and pittosporums. We also add in a few climax species, like rimu and miro, which live for centuries.

Looking ahead, the plan is to plant out the rest of the grassy areas, although some of these are extremely exposed. Our tactics will have to be well thought out, using the toughest species and tucking them in behind the shelter offered by previous years trees. This plan is likely to take another 10 years and 10,000 trees.

We will also need to keep on top of pest control, using the tools we have (DOC200 traps and bait stations) until more effective technologies emerge. Villains such as stoats, rats and possums would reinvade Rameka in a flash if we let our defenses down.

But right now, the local picture is looking great and is well supported by neighbouring initiatives such as Project Janszoon in Abel Tasman National Park and Project De-Vine controlling old man’s beard on a large farm opposite Rameka.

A global perspective

The global response to climate change has not been so effective. Earlier this month, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth report on the state of the global climate. The report made it clear that without urgent reductions in greenhouse emissions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will not be possible.

Current commitments made by governments of the world put us on track to reach 3.2 degrees Celsius by the end of century. In Aotearoa, that means a lot more droughts and wildfires in the east and a lot more floods and landslides, especially in the west. We will lose all our glaciers, and rising seas combined with more extreme storms will cause unprecedented coastal erosion. Understandably, scientists are becoming more and more frustrated at the lack of action.

The general message is that this is a ‘now or never’ moment. We are at a critical point in history, but it is not too late to take action. We can halve our emissions by 2030, but it will take more commitment from everyone at every level – individuals, businesses and governments.  

These IPCC reports are a compilation of thousands of scientific reports on all aspects of the environment, with contributions from around the world. They have been issued since 1990 and explain the science of climate change, as well as offering advice to policy makers on how to solve the problems we face.

Without a doubt, we are facing massive changes. If we don’t slash global emissions, then the changes will be forced upon us by extreme weather events, rising seas and ocean acidification, causing disruption to our civilisations and the ecosystems we depend on. Alternatively, we can face the challenge head on and change the systems that run our civilisations on our terms to proactively reduce our emissions and then adapt to the changes that are inevitable.

You can read the reports and summaries from the IPCC here at: www.ipcc.ch

Other rock-solid sources of information are NASA and New Zealand’s Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Looking ahead, locally

Meanwhile, back in Golden Bay, we can continue improving a small slice of paradise by planting trees and controlling invasive pests and enjoying the unique native animals and fun tracks.

In the last week of August (21–27), we invite you to join us to plant another 1,000 native trees.

We continue to receive generous donations, which pay for the trees we plant and the tools and traps that are needed for regular pest control and track work.

Last year, we also received a bequest from Margaret Cahill. Margaret lived up in Kerikeri and spent much of her life working as a teacher and then as a children’s book publisher. She never managed to visit Rameka, but she supported the project from afar. We intend to use Margaret’s gift to plant some trees and build another small sleeping pod for visiting volunteers. We have also commissioned local artist Jocelynne Bacci to make a sculpture of a kārearea, to be installed in Spring. This sculpture acknowledges Margaret’s love of native wildlife. The kārearea is a striking falcon once commonly found nesting in the bluffs of Rameka. We hope the efforts at Rameka can encourage it back.

The most important function of Rameka – carbon sequestration – is invisible. Every year, over 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide are silently sucked out of the atmosphere by the trees growing at Rameka. That’s the same amount as is emitted by driving a medium-sized car 5,000,000 km: trees really are awesome. In fact, our lives and the lives of all land-based species depend on trees.

With this in mind, I would like to acknowledge and thank the Rameka committee: Amy Thornborrow (secretary), Corina Ward (treasurer), Matt Shoult (pest control officer), Ricky Ward (multi-talented builder, fixer, weeder, etc), Paul Michell (Quiet Revolution Cycle Shop) and Bronnie Wall (organiser and blogger). These people are essential to Project Rameka, and I really don’t know what we would do without such a great committee. Thankfully, they have all agreed to stand for another year.

We expect that until the pandemic has fully passed it will be ‘steady as she goes’ at Rameka. If you have any questions or ideas that you would like raised at the AGM on Friday 6 May, please let us know, or pop along and see us in person. The AGM will be at the Senior Citizens Hall in Takaka, starting 7pm. We also hope to hear from other cycling groups in Golden Bay at the AGM.

All the best,

Jonathan Kennett

Project Rameka Incorporated Society Chair