Land corridor connects Abel Tasman and Kahurangi national parks

Friday, 8 September 2017

The newly-acquired land purchase, looking across to its northern boundary at the second ridge back from the foreground and down into the Takaka Valley.

Abel Tasman and Kahurangi national parks are now connected by a 169-hectare block of land purchased by the Department of Conservation.

Announcing the purchase, Associate Conservation Minister Nicky Wagner said the land, bought through the government's Nature Heritage Fund for $275,000, had high ecological value and would be added to Abel Tasman National Park.

A map of the newly-acquired land purchase.

The new block of land means that the two national parks are now linked by a corridor of legally-protected land on Takaka Hill.

The acquired land borders Abel Tasman National Park to its north and its southern boundary adjoins Takaka Hill Scenic Reserve. This reserve is next to the Harwood QEII Covenant-protected private land alongside Kahurangi National Park.

It is being managed by DOC as scenic reserve while the process of adding it to Abel Tasman National Park is completed.

Wagner said the protected areas would now form 'a scenic skyline of continuous native forest' on the crest of the Pikikiruna Range and Takaka Hill.

The Nature Heritage Fund is also purchasing an adjoining 43-hectare block from the same landowner, which contains the majority of a significant threatened plant species found on the land.

While this block needed to be surveyed before being transferred to the Department of Conservation (DOC), it will be added to Abel Tasman National Park in due course.

'These parcels of land contain diverse and rare ecosystems. Nearly half the land is covered in original forest and vegetation, and more than 200 native plant species grow there, including species only found locally or in the wider north-west Nelson area,' Wagner said.

'Birdlife on the land includes the threatened bush falcon - kārearea- and populations of tūī, kererū and bellbird.'

Original tōtara and mataī trees are also scattered through the mixed broadleaf species forest re-grown on the marble terrain where forest had been cleared.

This marble geology contains many of threatened plant species, including shovel mint, bamboo tussock, native germander, limestone kōwhai and limestone māhoe.

The Nature Heritage Fund is a Department of Conservation-administered body established in 1990 for buying land which has significant ecological or landscape value.

Since its inception the fund has protected over 341,880 hectares of indigenous ecosystem through legal and physical protection.

The news of the additional land has been welcomed by members of Project Janszoon, a privately funded initiative working alongside DOC to address the ecological restoration of the Abel Tasman National Park.

'There is now the exciting prospect of joining up the work being done in both the Abel Tasman National Park and Kahurangi National Park by a natural area corridor which will become an important ecological link,' project director Devon McLean said.