Planting along Te Ahu a Turanga – Manawatū Tararua Highway begins

The mammoth task of putting 420,000 native plants in the ground along Te Ahu a Turanga – Manawatū Tararua Highway over the next six months has begun.

The third landscaping season for the project, the construction of a $620 million link road between Manawatū and Tararua, is the first to feature planting along the highway alignment.

About 220,000 native plants are to be planted next to it in areas where earthworks are complete, and 60,000 plants in newly-constructed stream diversions, and 20,000 on the offset planting sites from previous seasons.

About 120,000 natives would also be planted at an area of former farmland near the Ashhurst end of the project. These plants would replace non-native trees which were removed over the summer.

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Waka Kotahi – NZ Transport Agency project spokesperson Grant Kauri said landscaping was an important part of the project’s intention to minimise the environmental impact of the construction process.

“One of the principles of this project is ‘treading lightly’. This means we are doing everything we can to protect the environment near the highway, both during the construction phase and post construction.

“Our aim is to leave this environment in a better condition than when we started, and our planting, maintenance and pest control programme is a huge part of achieving that.”

Kauri said another example of how the project adhered to this principle was through repurposing existing resources for other uses.

“At the eastern end of the project there was a block of pine trees that we had to cut down, so we processed some of those trees into mulch, which we used for landscaping in other areas of the site.

“Putting our value of kaitiakitanga into practice means finding ways to reuse resources, reducing our environmental footprint, while also creating cost efficiencies.

By the end of this season, they would have put more than 1.1 million plants in the ground, with around 2 million expected to be planted by the project’s completion in 2025.

Te Ahu a Turanga’s landscaping and pest control teams include groups from local iwi organisations Te Ao Turoa Environmental Centre (Rangitane o Manawatū) and Ngā Manu Taiao (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Tāmaki nui-a-Rua).

The teams have also been busy eradicating more than 1000 pests (mostly rabbits, hares and possums) from the areas planted over the past two seasons to make sure they could continue to thrive.