280,000 trees transform New Zealand island into conservation sanctuary

Rangitoto framed - Tiritiri Matangi Island Off the coast of Auckland, in New Zealand’s Hauraki Gulf, lies an island that looks like a slice of untouched wilderness. Dense native forest blankets its hills, rare birds call from the canopy and visitors walk along quiet tracks surrounded by ferns and flowering shrubs. Yet just a few decades ago, Tiritiri Matangi was a very different place: a grassy, heavily farmed island with only about 4% of its original forest cover remaining.The transformation of Tiritiri Matangi from a degraded landscape into a world-renowned conservation sanctuary is one of New Zealand’s most inspiring environmental success stories. And at the heart of that transformation were 280,000 trees, planted by thousands of volunteers over a single decade, according to 2013 study titled 'Tiritiri Matangi – an overview of 25 years of ecological restoration'.A landscape stripped bareLike many islands and coastal areas in New Zealand, Tiritiri Matangi was once covered in rich native forest. But from the mid-19th century, the island was cleared for farming. Trees were felled, undergrowth was removed and the land was turned into pasture for livestock.By the 1970s, black-and-whi...