A ceremony was held at the Slope Hill Reserve yesterday — formerly a barren grazing block — to celebrate the planting of the last 100 trees in the landscape-scale planting project.
The massive project began when the Whakatipu Reforestation Trust was invited to apply for a $420,000 grant from the Hilton Global Foundation, under their Destination Stewardship Pillar.
The trust chose the Department of Conservation-owned site in part due to its proximity to the Queenstown Trail.
Thanks to the grant, Mana Tahuna and the Queenstown community, there are now 22,000 cardboard plant protectors covering the hillside.
Trust project lead and former operations manager Karen O’Donahoo says for the past 10 years they’ve focused on mobilising vollies to grow and plant 10,000 trees and shrubs each year.
"A landscape-scale project like this was something we could only aspire to."
Rabbit control and fencing has removed one challenge to the plants’ establishment, while co-funding from a Love Queenstown grant and donated labour by Central Irrigation solved another — the dry and exposed site will be irrigated for three years to help the plants establish.
O’Donahoo says neighbouring farmers Tony and Sarah Strain enabled daily access to their farm track, stabilised with support from Beaver Contracting, helped unload plant deliveries and rescued more than one vehicle from the mud.
The Slopehill trees will progress the growth of a native ecological corridor from Arrowtown to Lake Whakatipu.
