Not a tree in sight for 2km

• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Publication title: West Coast Farming Times, The

Then there are others, like Martin Abel, who work tirelessly to help landowners protect outstanding or rare stands forever

Mr Abel is the West Coast's QEII National Trust regional representative.

He visits landowners who want to protect anything from a block of bush to a significant rock formation with an amazing landscape of view - forever.

"People say we don't need any covenanted land because there is heaps of bush.

"But we have done a pretty good job of clearing the matai and totara forest on the flats, where there is now a lot of pine and grass.

"And because so much has been cleared the remnants are more important," said Mr Abel.

"After all, it's far cheaper to fence off an existing block than try to bring bush back.

"I'm not discouraging people from planting - but it's a whole lot smarter to put a fence up and protect the native forest for the birds - some of which can only fly 300m and need the bush."

The bush cloaking the West Coast's hills and ranges was very different to that on the flats - and great to have.

"But I can now look across Hari Hari plains and not see a tree for 2km.

"A landowner will have a tidy up in a paddock and a couple of trees are gone, then move to another area and three more trees are down - then wonder why the runoff is so fast and the soil wet.

"It's those incremental cuts - and before you know it we might as well be living on the Canterbury Plains."

The important thing about a covenant was the relationship between the trust and landowners.

"There's not many things you cannot sort out by talking."

A covenant is a deed between a landowner and the trust so both protect the land, he said.

Secondly - covenants are in perpetuity. Even after the landowner dies covenants remain - and are passed onto the next in the family - or the new landowners.

Mr Abel said it was becoming more common for people to buy bush blocks and covenant part of them.

"There are people who genuinely love their patch of bush, or wetland, but a lot of people don't know there is a way of protecting it."

The QEII Trust was established in the 1970s as a mechanism to protect private land.

Those who think a covenant can be overturned and the protected bush felled or subdivided and sold have tested the theory before the courts and had the book thrown at them and been forced to backtrack, she said.

Mr Abel said each...