I have ownership of 50 hectares mix of pasture and bush, fully organic. Currently dairy cattle are on it. Rent is negligible, covers rates. Farmer is running it to ruin so am considering letting it go with no cattle on it. Some paddocks would turn to scrub some to wild flower. Any rules to letting it go like this?
Posted Nov 29, 2023, 1:39 AM UTC
Something like this?
Thirty years ago Hugh Wilson had a novel idea of how to take hilly farmland on Canterbury's Banks Peninsula and turn it back into native forest.
It was 1987 and botanist Dr Wilson suggested gorse would be the perfect cover to protect self-sown native seedlings. The idea was dismissed by many; one farmer labelled the plan the work of 'fools and dreamers'. Leaving gorse alone was considered heresy by pastoralists.
Now the Hinewai Nature Reserve is 15,000 hectares of flourishing native bush
Hinewai is awesome, but it's been his full-time job for decades, and he's had help. I don't think OP has that kind of commitment.
It could still stand as an example of a successful return to native forest - which seems to be what they were discussing.
I would love for it to be returned to native forest, two paddocks are narrow enough that I think the bush on otherwise would grow over in time, other paddocks would need a full time commitment. If I win lotto it's a sure thing
If you've got native birds around stuff will seed under the gorse... Long process though. Lots of places might give you free seedlings, seconds.etc, still a lot of work planting them and looking after them if you want most to survive. But plants are f'n expensive if you have to pay retail!
Talk to your local/regional environmental services agency (Doc, Ecan or local equivalent) about this and see if there is any funding or grants available to have this done.
Mostly he's let birds do the majority of the work .. they've really only planted out around the buildings. It took 20odd years for the natives to overtop the gorse.
yeah came here for this comment, that guy has proven that gorse is a good thing and will help regen the native bush.
it might have worked in his case of terrain, microclimate and intended timeframes and outcomes etc, but I can point to countless north island hillsides growing nothing but a gorse monoculture tthat make me seriously skeptical of gorse as a nursery species, when Manuka is already wholly suitable for the job.
Gorse is not the magic bullet some people seem to think it is - any time any light gets to the ground you'll have gorse spring up, for the next 30 years since the last flowering plant got established. It's an absolute nightmare.
Yes, better to have no gorse than gorse.
The key to Hinewai success was that there were other natives self-sown under the gorse which eventually grew up through it and shaded the gorse and caused it to fade. Gorse grows first, but other things can and do grow through it as things which take longer to grow and represent the more mature forest growth.
30 years is such a short time frame for rainforest trees that can live for 800+ years. The canopy will eventually shade the ground entirely.
Yep, but we do deal in human timeframes generally
but they wont if the seed isn't there to begin with
Gorse is considered "invasive" for a reason.
I’ve got 30 hectares of regenerating natives and the few patches of gorse are still pretty much patches of gorse 20 years later, also it’s horrendous stuff to try and work in. Much better without.
You just have to keep the gorse clear 10m from your boundary fence. I remember Hugh saying that was the hardest job
It's good for weta also.
CUE Haven in west auckland rewilded old dairy land too.
Your local regional council will have some rules about not letting noxious weeds take over, but generally they don’t enforce it (how could they, when they let the roadsides grow forests of them).
If it has patches of regenerating bush you could probably transition it completely but it would take work - control the invasive exotic weed species, keep deer, goats and pigs out, control possums and other predators, and plant the bare parts. You might be able to get some funding or free plants if you’re prepared to do the work.
Generally the main wildflowers you get in NZ paddock are ragwort. If it looks a mess now with cattle grazing it will be ten times worse without the cattle to keep the blackberry and privet down.
Hmm yeah I have a hatred for ragwort, spent many summers as a kid killing the stuff
Can you get a farmer whose into regenerative farming practices? My brother is a dairy farmer and he’s keen on exploring regenerative farming techniques but land-owners tend to be entrenched in their expectations of traditional farming methods. You could put it out there I’m sure some keen people would love to practice regenerative farming, improving the quality of your soil while keeping it productive. I visited Mangarara Farm and it was really cool to see how effective their systems were.
If you want to stick with the wild flowers idea Mary Renolds talks about these sorts of ideas. I don’t think the process is completely passive because the grass creates a mat that can stop the wildflower seeds reaching the soil. I was thinking maybe creating clay seed bombs might be a more passive strategy (I want to turn some of my lawn into a wildflower field too).
I mean the regional councils are usually on pest stuff and district councils are on road maintenance.
That’s how.
You might want to do it in a more deliberate and managed way. Invasive things could take over quickly and you'll end up with a worse problem...
Too true, I'd wait for seedlings to pop up in the main block of bush and start transplanting
It’s actually really easy to propogate some natives - things like kanuka, puriri, cabbage trees and karamu germinate readily and are about a metre tall by the time autumn comes and you want to plant them out.
When I’m in the bush I pick seeds and berries as I see them and have a go at growing them. My bark gardens are full of little native seedlings in the spring so I pot them up too.
And if you want to buy them they're like twenty bucks each!
Yeah get a bit of forest established, then expand bit by bit
This. Plant some natives and try to keep the gorse, wilding pines etc to a minimum
Be careful just letting it go, roughly 60% of the seeds in the top layer of soil is just shit undesirable weed species, depending where you are in nz you’ll end up with docks, buttercups, gorse, all that nasty shit. If it’s full of noxious shit like solanum you might have to actively control it as they spread like wildfire.
You can hands off native plant it, depending on region and altitude you can throw in all sorts of nz natives that will compete pretty well, or actively try to create corridors between existing bush you have.
Long story short you can let it go to shit and it may end up okay but I’d almost put my left nut on it turning to trash. Then there’s the possibility of your unkept problem spreading seeds into neighbouring properties and all that.
Side note typically wildflowers used on roadside berms etc are still absolutely smashed back to the floorboards early spring to allow the flowers a chance to get ahead of grasses.
Cheers for the reply, yeah I would stay as active as I could - the bush regenerates really quickly there so good opportunity for transplanting seedlings. Most recently I saw the farmer had let cattle into the pristine Kauri section - was fuming.
It's genuinely surprising how well our forest regenerate given grazing pressure is eliminated, I would be pissed as well hah. but yea you're in NZ I'd be willing to bet you'd know an ecologist or environmental scientist within your friend group somewhere that could help sort it out.
Used to be one myself haha
If you own that land but don’t want to work it or have someone manage it for you, you should find a way to re-wild it properly. Letting it go to scrubs and invasive plants is negligence imo, and just makes it more difficult for anybody coming in after you.
It can become a big fire risk especially in a drought year following spring rain.
True, it's on a peninsula too, high winds dry it out quickly
Yes, you're required to manage the fire risk, so you need to check with the council before you begin to save the problems later.
Farmer is running it to ruin
What does this actually mean? Weeds are already cropping up? What outcome do you actually want? Native bush/reforestation or just scrubby gorse and weeds? Legally, you shouldn't have pest species spreading onto neighbouring properties but thats never enforced.
We had a similar situation with our property - We let our paddocks go for 10 years and all we got was a half metre sea of Kikuyu, with a few acres of Blackberry nearly 2 metres tall and Gorse trees sticking out of it all. It's been 3 years since we mowed the lot of it and burnt off the gorse, got sheep to help manage the grass and we're still spraying every 3 months to knock back the blackberry. Some areas we are thinking of planting pine or eucalypts to supress the worst of the gorse and provide windbreaks for thee natives we plant.
Native planting here has been slow and the extreme weather has not helped, but the areas that the bush tires to reclaim just can't get established without some help and we have to fence off any plantings to keep the walking lawn mowers from eating all of it, but if we let the grass go then the weeds just smother anything we plant anyway.
My advice would be to figure out what species are suitable for your location, find a local nursery, and slowly plant your way out, converting one paddock at a time. This takes time and effort.
Absolutely right, it's had blackberry and gorse be an issue in the past so I could see that making a huge impact. like you say one paddock at a time, keep farming on the others.
If you seed any of the flat stuff you can do cool mixes of sun flowers, wild flowers, turnips, odd clovers etc. Whatever works where you are.
Cousin of mine did it a decade or two ago and there's still random sunflowers and turnips and random things turning up on the edges
If your fencing is up to it you could run some goats in there to eat the blackberry
Have you looked into replanting it for carbon credits? Creating a native bush reserve can kill two birds at once
Or home a thousand
Would recommend planting a forest (natives if you can) for the carbon credits, if you haven’t thought of that.
This is the way I think. From what I understand you can get 3000 a year per hectare for native bush that's is 70 percent canopy cover. The other possible option that might be cheaper and faster is popper poles, thue can get 1500 a year per hectare and you can graze underneath still
It’s better for everyone if land is productive, and native forest IS productive. One benefit of carbon credits is that people can profit from this activity if it’s something they choose to do benevolently - so if you’re just going to do nothing with it, why not let the land do the nothing how it’s supposed to and make some money on the side :))
Talk to your council
I'd say talk to your local doc and see what they would recommend to help the native wildlife and perhaps more vulnrable plants. Sometimes doc goes with volunteers and helps clear out gorse and invasive broom etc too.
This. Reach out. Doc and council also don't have all the bases covered so ask around at nursery's.
Wasn't someone looking to buy a chunk of land recently?
Where are you located and do you have many pests? rabbits/hares or possums?
How about planting on it for carbon credits?
Get some guidance from Project Crimson https://projectcrimson.org.nz/?ref=rewildingmag.com They do great work, with schools and community organisations. There are a lot of pest plants that can quickly take over, so if you're rewilding from scratch there could be some simple dos & don't to help set it up for success.
Everyone here talking Gorse. STFU you obviously haven’t cut cleared and burned a paddock of the stuff. It’s a nightmare
Depends on your District Council.
let me know where it is so I can go some weed on it :P
If you want to clean it up let a massive pack of goats on it. Reinstating the land will take a bit of work. You need to do your research and decide do you have the time, resources, money etc .
Just letting it go might not work out too well. But I'd be interested in seeing the experiment!
Up to you but it's highly likely it will just grow covered in gorse, broom and other pests. Depends on where it is really as climates change from one region to another so try and find some natives for your area.
it’s a decent concern but rebuilding plant/wildlife generally happens in stages and in some cases weeds like gorse are the first to establish themselves, if you give gorse time it will turn into a shelter for other plants that are more sensitive to environment conditions.
So over time you get waves of different plants establishing themselves as the soil becomes more aerated, shelter from wind is created, and nutrients return to soil from degredation of plant bio matter.
at 50 hectares you're likely to get complaints from neighbours to the council about not controlling noxious weeds on your property
you missed the part in the comments where he said he’s doing it by the paddock and not intending to do a full conversion
i didnt downvote you champ
Successional plant assemblages are affected by the existing dominant canopy species.
"Hands-off regeneration" won't have the same result as intentionally planning and maintaining a proper planting regime. I.e., just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
A) he’s looking for something that’s self managed, or maybe managed for him.
B) Gorse does have a selection bias as a nursery plant and favours broadleaf natives over others, but if your choice is: a paddock, (hopefully) wildflowers, gorse seed bombs, and an intensive kanuka rewilding project, he might want to have options
Don’t listen to this. Gorse is a nightmare. Don’t let it go to gorse. Just pulled 3000 broom plants from my block. The work is real. What about working with doc to plant it out. Their jobs for nature programme
lotta doc and other ecology projects use gorse for shelter, they use “seed bombs” to scatter them. It was started by a farmer in 1987 when he successfully reforested some of his land with gorse plant nurseries. It’s old news mate you just have to consider how you do it.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018703481/gorse-for-the-trees-how-one-man-brought-back-a-forest
Gorse is actually a great nursery plant for more substantial natives, larger ferns or any trees will outcompete gorse eventually
Can confirm. My dad decided that a steep area wasn't worth clearing of gorse. It now (30 years later) has well established totora and other natives coming through. Gorse is a legume, so it's great for the soil. This process relies on birds dropping seeds, so if you have no other bush near by it will have limited success.
So if there are no seeds the gorse will remain forever?
In my experience, gorse seems to eventually be overtaken by blackberry if nothing grows under it. Cunt of a situation to clear.
Yup. There's a great short doco on an old boy out near Akaroa who has regenerated native bush through this exact method of allowing the gorse to shelter the growing natives
Hugh Wilson of Hinewai Reserve! The documentary is called Fools and Dreamers: Regenerating A Native Forest and is available on YouTube on the Happen Films channel. Well worth a watch if you have a spare thirty minutes.
Thanks!
No. It reeeeeally depends on the area and adjacent seed sources. The succession pathway through gorse is very different than through Kānuka/mānuka and can significantly lower diversity for longer.
This is well worth a read. https://newzealandecology.org/nzje/2811
Also gorse is extremely flammable and leaches nitrogen into waterways.
Yep. Can it be a nursery species? Yes.
Is it naturally a nursery species and where you have gorse will eventually be native? No.
Yes I would have thought it is generally much better to use manuka / kanuka as nursery shrubs. Hell at least the bees would be super happy.
For native bees yes. Honey bees far prefer gorse over manuka/kanuka.
Snap — I just referenced the same paper in response to a different comment lol
Nice one. Hugh Wilson's work is great but it really gave a whole bunch of unqualified people the confidence to give bad advice. Sigh.
Good nuanced take but vs someone running cattle (badly?) on the land? Could the nitrogen leech be worse? The diversity might take.linher than ideal but still better... right?
Yeah for sure, there are a number of factors to take into account. It's more complicated than just saying gorse is a good cover crop though.
Oh yeah but that process he's been doing for years, if OP is planning on keeping their property long term its certainly viable but if its short term planned and controlled native planting would be better
From what i understand gorse is extremely valuable to native bush regeneration, it is only considered evil because it is bad for grazing land not for our native bush.
Check out this doco about Hugh Wilson, everyone called him a mad man but he proved them all wrong.
Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest is a free 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve, on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, and its kaitiaki/manager of 30 years, botanist Hugh Wilson. When, in 1987, Hugh let the local community know of his plans to allow the introduced ‘weed’ gorse to grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate farmland into native forest, people were not only skeptical but outright angry – the plan was the sort to be expected only of “fools and dreamers”.
Now considered a hero locally and across the country, Hugh oversees 1500 hectares resplendent in native forest, where birds and other wildlife are abundant and 47 known waterfalls are in permanent flow. He has proven without doubt that nature knows best – and that he is no fool.
https://happenfilms.com/fools-and-dreamers
I understand and have watched the film, but for such a small plot and likely limited time and resources by OP, planning on such a long process on a likely flat rural area that's had up to 100 years of weeds seeds in the topsoil with probably little to none of the native seeds left anymore would just provide the opposite of what OPs intentions are
Letting it grow back naturally is a choice... even if it goes to gorse and broom. They provide the cover for natives to grow underneath. Only thing is this could take 15 yrs maybe.. idont know exactly hour long, I just remember it was done on Banks Peninsula.
Quickest solution would be to get advise from someone up on conservation management.
Gorse will turn to native after a few years, its actually an accepted method now. Depends entirely on adjoing neighbours though, if you are next to native bush only then you are fine.
One method us to mow the grass right down to the dirt next to the natives and gradually allow the native seeds to take root (manuka etc.)