What a way to end the year - introducing two new stunning conservation covenant projects under way on the De Passes property in beautiful Kaituna Valley!

Both areas are rich in amazing biodiversity which will be further enhanced once they are fully protected and regain their natural balance. Not only are they highly valuable in their own right, but their proximity to other significant areas of protected native biodiversity will turbo boost ecological gains. It is like laying a korowai or cloak of protection across a vast swathe of ecological taonga .

The first of these covenants is Okana Valley Head, an 11ha area that boasts an array of remnant and regenerating podocarp forest. It houses a valuable headwater source flowing into the Kaituna river through a bushed gully on neighbouring properties to the valley floor, then along several kilometres of riparian plantings into Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere.

The second covenant encompasses 130ha on the opposite valley flank, nestled directly below DOC’s magnificent Mt Herbert Scenic Reserve. It’s a powerful lynchpin connecting 400ha of privately protected land on one side to BPCT’s largest covenant to date - the Parr family’s 334ha Te Ara Pātiki in the head of Kaituna Valley.

The new Mt Herbert South block is part of an impressively large swathe of conservation land stretching from the Packhorse Reserve in Kaituna to Western Valley and further around to Waipuna Saddle. This phenomenal biodiversity hub encompasses a multitude of conservation protections on both sides of the ridge under many different tenures. Collectively they protect over 2,300ha!

This wonderful korowai includes the 500ha Te Ahu Pātiki Mt Herbert and Mt Bradley area under QEII protection, several other QEII covenants stretching toward Orton Bradley, a mosaic of retired private land areas, many other BPCT covenants, and four significant DOC reserves.

“It’s a pleasure and a privilege working alongside such motivated landowners like the De Passes, getting in the driver’s seat, leaving legacies, seeing the pride they take in local natural heritage and enabling future conservation potential values on their land to be realised in tandem with farming goals,” said BPCT Covenants Coordinator, Marie Neal. “Each covenant forms part of a much bigger picture, which the wider community will benefit from forever."