A generous investment in the country’s smallest national park has seen whio, pateke and kaka reintroduced into the Abel Tasman, with gorse and wilding pines also removed from the landscape.
They are just some of the gains in the country’s first large-scale conservation partnership, Project Janszoon, which is coming to an end after 14 years of work and more than $21 million in investment.
Nelson couple Marion and Bill Gilbertson are among the many project volunteers who have spent years removing weeds from the park.
“I remember our very first trip as teenagers along this coastline, as you walked on the beaches to one side was just walls of gorse,” Marion Gilbertson said.
Now along parts of the coastline, it is hard to find any evidence of the spiky shrubs.
“The same way that you get used to seeing weeds on our foreshore, we got used to there being no birdsong, so we just expected there wasn’t any and now we are hearing it and seeing robins and pīwakawaka and kaka,” Marion Gilbertson said.
“You realise that over time and with a lot of infrastructure and money and support, you can turn an entire park around, that’s just mind-blowing.”
Bill Gilbertson said it would not have been possible without the philanthropic investment and a willing workforce of volunteers.
“It’s the only way the conservation estate like this can survive.”
A bold vision for large-scale restoration
Project Janszoon was established in 2012, and since then a trapping network has been extended across 90 percent of the park with tens of thousands of pests wiped out, wilding pines and other weeds have been removed, native birds reintroduced and lowland forest restored.
The conservation trust set out with the bold vision of restoring the park’s ecosystems, made possible by funding from anonymous donors who were later identified as Auckland couple Neal and Annette Plowman.
It worked alongside the Department of Conservation (DOC), the Abel Tasman Birdsong Trust and iwi to make that happen.
