Southern wilderness bridges land and sea

Let’s dream big, says Benjamin Swale, of Wellington Forest and Bird, and try to bring back takahē and kōkako, in addition to kiwi.

Te Kopahou is Wellington at its wildest. From the rocky shores of Te Moana-o-Raukawa/the Cook Strait, all the way up to 495m-high Hawkins Hill, this huge reserve extends northwards right up to the Zealandia fence line.

It’s a fragile ecosystem and is only slowly recovering from the destruction of the 19th century that saw the land scorched by fire and transformed into marginal farmland. This 1124-hectare swathe of the Outer Green Belt now offers exciting possibilities that include, but are not limited to, the re-introduction of our national icon the kiwi.

Unlike other parts of the Outer Green Belt, Te Kopahou contains an intense patchwork of at-risk and rare Cook Strait coastal forest and shrubland flora. It’s also jam-packed with Significant Natural Areas (SNAs).

This scrubland includes uncommon species like shrubby tororaro (muehlenbeckia astonii) and Cook Strait kō whai as well as taramea (spaniard), taupata, mingimingi, mountain flax and native clematis. Moving inland it merges with lowland forest as the hills climb steeply from the coast. On the highest peaks and ridges are plants adapted to altitude.

At a first glance this might seem unusual so close to the coast, though it’s less surprising when you consider that the North Island’s highest windspeed of 248kmh was recorded here – twice.

Before human settlement, kohekohe would have dominated this coastal forest. Secondary growth is now slowly reclaiming the Hape and Waipapa stream catchments, starting from the deepest gullies. Ecologically these streams are amongst Wellington’s finest: Sheltered from the strongest of winds and shaded from the hottest of the midday sun, life has tenaciously clung on in these deep streambeds and on the precipitous escarpments since the burning in the 1850s.

Fed with life-giving water funnelled down from the ridges, some of these gullies are so steep that even a century and a half of browsing by sheep, goats and cattle didn’t manage to wipe out remnant populations of coastal trees, even including the odd nı¯kau palm if you look hard enough.

Our local manu are now getting in on the game, with tū ı¯, kā kā and kererū increasingly abundant at Te Kopahou. In the north alongside Zealandia, tı¯eke, kā kā riki and titipounamu are now also knocking at the door. Capital Kiwi has this reserve firmly in its sights as a future stronghold of the threatened Ō kā rito kiwi.

As mammalian predators like rats and stoats are eradicated, this could also be a North Island refuge for takahē , a species which has recently been re-established in Kahurangi National Park.

Let’s dream big – why not kō kako and long-tailed bats too?

Te Kopahou is special for many reasons. It is Wellington City’s only reserve sufficiently remote to be considered wilderness on a grand scale. It’s also a continuous natural environment blending the terrestrial ecosystem with the Taputeranga Marine Reserve.

This is a rich habitat home to abundant marine life like pā ua, kina, kourā (crayfish), and a kaleidoscope of fish species. Whales are occasional though increasingly frequent visitors, fur seals bask in the sun at Red Rocks/ Pari-whero, and kororā (little blue penguins) come ashore to rear their young here.

In the past, species such as black and storm petrels would have raised

their chicks in burrows amongst the scrub, while skinks and tuatara would have joined them, protected by the forest leaf litter, decaying logs and divaricating shrubs. Seabirds once nested on the mainland here in such abundance that the guano deposited allowed the crumbly greywacke rock and infertile soils to sustain a flourishing ecosystem.

With successful predator control, Te Kopahou offers us the chance to bring back seabirds like shearwaters and prions to breed amongst the shrubs and forest, thereby re-establishing a lost ecosystem which cycles nutrients between land and sea.

Aotearoa New Zealand has been absent in global efforts to arrest the degradation of the land and oceans by committing to protecting 30 per cent of both. We Wellingtonians can build on our audacious success in bringing back our urban dawn chorus to show the rest of New Zealand, as well as other countries, what is possible by restoring Te Kopahou. Our unique location next to Te Moanao-Raukawa/the Cook Strait offers our city an opportunity to experience and draw attention to the interconnected web of life present on land and in the oceans, as we protect and restore it for future generations.