Pohutukawa blossom heralds in Xmas |
Dear Friends,
Firstly, a big thanks to you for your continued support of our project for another year. Now that we are at the end of the year, and have completed the Assessment of Environmental Effects document containing over 100 pages of professional input costing several thousand dollars, its gratifying to be able to tick that one off, especially as it positively validated the proposal.
Thank you to all of you who came along to our annual planting days in June. A very successful two days attracting 25, and 27 people respectively. The Kerikeri shade house crew came down earlier in the year to see the progress, and were very pleased to see the progression over the last five years of planting around the coastline.
We didn’t start off the year on a happy note with the passing of Sir Edmund Hillary who had been so generous to us through his patronage of our organisation.
In his honour, we have erected two totara bench seats, one in the reserve and one at the school, carved to denote his association to the area.
We will appoint a new patron in 2009.
The first job for next year is to apply for the minor resource consents that we need for the predator proof fence and then really it’s only the money that stands in our way.
The geological and archaeological ‘Walk and Talk’ are expected to be back on the agenda over the summer and the details will be circulated as soon as they are confirmed.
We have established good contacts with Northtec and are pursuing similar with Auckland University for research partnerships which we believe will be of interest to some of you to become involved. Education is quite a focus of the Trust and we know there are opportunities for our local schoolchildren for projects in the reserve. We will be following up on this.
We also know there are many friends and others, who have special interests such as the two mentioned above but also including subjects such as ornithology, botany, ecology and Maori history. We are working towards developing interest groups and opportunities in the reserve for sharing knowledge and experiences.
The Dept. of Conservation has recently spent a great amount of money upgrading the tracks in the reserve which makes access easier. Come and enjoy.
From all of us at the Trust and Restoration Committee, we wish you a safe and happy Christmas.
Kind regards
Robin Lieffering
Chair, Bream Head Conservation Trust
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