Hello neighbours and supporters!
Hello This newsletter is primarily for all the landowners involved with Project De-Vine who are mainly on the eastern side of Golden Bay. It is you as landowners and pest plant controllers that have made Project De-Vine possible. The newsletter is also for the various team members, DOC and TDC staff, sponsors and supporters near and far. If you have a neighbour in the funded groups without e-mail please pass this information along to him or her.
It has been a very busy year, with many exciting new projects and contacts being made. At the same time the on-going projects are still happening & receive regular attention to keep the pest vines from re-establishing. As a non-profit group under the umbrella of Forest and Bird, we have benefitted massively from their local support, insurance cover, financial administration and more recently logistics support from their head office.
Big change
Project Mohua has been born these last 3 months. Mohua is the Maori word for Golden Bay and also the Yellowhead bird, which was once common here until about 60 years ago. It is a coming together of the 4 different eco-volunteer groups working in Golden Bay: Weedbusting (mainly Project De-Vine), Riparian planting, Trapping groups & Bird monitoring & habitat enhancement.
Project De-Vine started in 2010 as a neighbourhood weedbusting project in response to the difficulty for individual landowners in removing pest vine infestations. We now organise vine removal teams all over Golden Bay. We have received funding from Biofunds, Tasman District Council, QEII Trust, Tasman Environment Trust, local businesses and individual owners. We have manually removed over 10,000 Old man’s beard and 100,000 Banana passion vines and plan to kill many thousands more to stop the spread of these rampant, forest destroying vines.