Kauri health survey Waitākere Ranges

Caryn Wilkinson Reporter from Community News

A new kauri monitoring programme has been launched in the Waitakere Ranges.

Auckland Council workers are surveying healthy trees as part of their study into kauri dieback disease.

They are investigating the impacts of the disease on individual trees and the wider kauri population.

Auckland Council kauri dieback team manager Lisa Tolich said new remote sensing technology had given the council a good estimate of how many kauri trees spanned the ranges.

The team had drawn a sample of trees to survey.

“We are giving 3500 kauri in the Waitākere Ranges a full health check and will continue monitoring these specific trees for years to come,” Tolich said.

“The trees have been randomly selected from the overall population so field teams don’t know going in whether they’ll be assessing healthy or diseased trees.

“This is important because it means we can build a picture of what’s happening across the entire population – not just the areas where we know the pathogen is already present.”

Data collected will identify risks to tree health associated with the locations, environment and other factors such as changing climate.

Survey findings will help the council assess how well precautionary measures are working and if any adjustments are needed.

Funding for the monitoring programme comes from the Natural Environment Targeted Rate at an expected cost of between $650,000 and $700,000.

This includes the design and delivery of the Waitākere Ranges Surveillance programme between 2020-2022.

Environment and Climate Change Committee chair Richard Hills said the investment was another step towards helping protect and preserve kauri forests.

“Kauri dieback disease is unfortunately not going away and the more we can find out about the disease, through robust processes like our surveillance and monitoring programmes, the better placed we are to protect our native taonga now and for generations to come.”