Schools Planting for Conservation

Hawke’s Bay’s annual ‘Conservation Week’ schools planting programme begins at Tūtira this Monday (3 August).

Pan Pac Forest Products Ltd is again sponsoring this event which is in its twenty-third year and is run in conjunction with Department of Conservation and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council.

Each year, five schools take part and this year Greenmeadows, Frimley, Bledisloe, Twyford and Mayfair school students will be bused to Tūtira to experience conservation work first hand.

This year there is a new arrangement with the Guthrie Smith Trust who will take each school group for a walk and talk around their Arboretum at Tūtira and introduce students to the wide range of trees from around the world that are growing there.

Students will plant native trees and shrubs near the shore of Lake Tūtira. On some days, a representative from Maungaharuru-Tangitū Trust will talk to them about the Māori history of this area.

Before heading back to school, the afternoon session includes a stop at White Pine Bush and DOC staff will guide students through native New Zealand forest where kahikatea is the prominent species.

These planting days are held ahead of the national Conservation Week as this is the best time to plant native trees to ensure they will grow. Over the twenty-three years of the joint programme, there have been around 115 Hawke’s Bay school groups involved and many hundreds of students.

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