Nurturing our native forest and wetland reserves

City Forests has approximately 2,400 ha of its land as permanent reserve sites in and around its plantation forest areas.  This represents more than 10% of the working forest area that City Forests manages.

These reserves have a wide variety of conservation values, including small areas protected for unique and nationally significant soil types, regenerating and mature native forest areas, wetlands and significant water catchments protected for rare native fish species. These areas range in size from a few hectares to several hundred hectares. Some areas have high conservation values, while others are of relatively low value but are still important in a wider context.

There are significant stands of manuka forest (Leptospermum scoparium) in the City Forests estate and their value includes supporting local manuka honey production. Manuka honey is used worldwide because of its health-giving properties and powerful antibacterial qualities.

Monitoring

The company has a management plan for these reserves and it periodically employs ecologists to survey the sites (and potential sites) to assess their value and assist us to develop appropriate management and monitoring protocols.  City Forests has had a reserves' classification system developed for the reserve areas by Wildland Consultants, an ecological consultancy organisation.  The system is designed to comply with the principles and criteria of FSC^® .  Classification has been progressively applied to reserve areas as fine level survey analysis becomes available for them.  This will help us to prioritise our management effort and expenditure towards the most important conservation values and issues present.

City Forests checks designated reserve areas for any management issues by a combination of on-foot and UAV assessment.  Timely wilding and exotic weed control remain important priorities in some areas.