West Coast businesses dig deep for World Environment Day

To commemorate World Environment Day, over the last ten years Conservation Volunteers New Zealand  (CVNZ) has organised a Tree Planting Challenge with corporates and businesses in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. This year CVNZ Punakaiki ran the challenge for the first time on the West Coast too.

On Friday 31 May at the Deverys Creek Coronation Planting project site on Barrytown Flats, four teams donned their gloves and safety glasses, grabbed spades and got stuck in to plant as many trees as they could in the space of just two hours.

It was a hotly contested time as the 34 planters all dug deep and together planted 1,558 native trees. The overall winners were Vector Control Services from West Coast Regional Council managing to plant 60 trees per team member and their total trees planted were 478. Second equal with 40 trees per person, was Development West Coast (400 trees planted) and Liddell  Construction (part of Isaac Group) getting in 240 trees with the smallest team of only six people. ElectroNet were the fourth team who planted 390 trees with a close-run 39 trees per team member.

The results were so even the team leaders had to work out the tree numbers planted based on the number of people in the team and how many trees were planted per minute.

The challenge was generously supported by Mitre 10 Greymouth and nationally by Advance Landscape Systems, both organisations contributing a whole swag of goodies for spot prizes.

This year overall, there were 23 teams competing in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Punakaiki and collectively our business team volunteers planted 8,433 trees, shrubs and grasses.

With the success of the Corporate Planting Challenge, more than 3,500 native trees have been planted to date at the Coronation Planting site.

Coronation Planting project

To commemorate the coronation of King Charles III in 2023, the New Zealand government gifted $1 million for 100,000 native trees to be planted around New Zealand through to the end of 2024. This is being administered by Trees That Count. The Deverys Creek Project is the only Coronation Planting project taking place in the West Coast Region.

The “Deverys Creek Project in Partnership with Conservation Volunteers New Zealand” (CVNZ) is located on private land on the Langridge Farm on the Barrytown Flats. The farm is being destocked and has remnant Kahikatea swamp forest and wetlands, regenerating farmland, as well as areas of wetland and forest habitats being regenerated. The project objective is to plant 7,000 trees in another area of the farm to improve Mountains-to-Sea biodiversity for bird, herpetofauna and fish species. It’s a habitat already home to Australasian bittern, fernbird, whitebait and seasonal visitation by kōtuku and royal spoonbill.