Oreti Totara Dune Forest Restoration - 6 Years, 1200 Trees
Six years. Twelve hundred trees. One rare forest coming back.
On a Sunday this winter the Southland Tramping and Outdoor Recreation Club finished something they began in 2021: six straight years of planting trees at our Ōreti Tōtara Dune Forest Reserve, near Invercargill.
A hundred trees a year to begin with. Then 700 in 2024, to mark the club’s 75th anniversary. A hundred more in each of the past two years. Around ten or twelve members turning up each time, whatever the Southland weather had in store.
The first plantings are well away now — some of the wineberry is over three metres. The later ones will soon stand taller than the grass around them.
Ōreti is one of the last tōtara dune forests left in the country. It is being brought back by people who simply kept coming back.
Read more of this story and check out the project on our SERN site here.
Posted on: Tuesday, 15 September 2026
