Half a million native trees planted as Watercare’s record Hūnua planting season wraps up

About half a million native trees have gone in the ground this winter as Watercare’s Hūnua Regeneration Programme ramps up with its biggest planting season to date.

Watercare headworks manager James Talbot says the programme is one of the country’s biggest native planting initiatives.

Photo: Watercare headworks manager James Talbot left and operations controller Brendon Dockary plant native trees.

“We’re progressively restoring around 2200 hectares of former forestry land in our dam catchments and planting millions of native trees.

“The Hūnua Ranges are home to some of Auckland’s most important water sources. Our four dams here supply about two thirds of the city’s drinking water, so back in 2017 we acquired the forestry right to give us more control over the activities in our catchments.

“Forestry activities on the slopes of our catchment area make the land more vulnerable to slips, which can affect the quality of the water in our reservoirs.

“We really felt the impact of this during the Tasman Tempest storm in 2017, when hundreds of landslips sent clay into our water supply dams and made the water much more difficult to treat.”

While no more pines will be planted, some areas of the forest will be harvested as the existing pine trees mature. Watercare then regenerates the harvested area with natives over the planting season in winter.

“This has been our biggest planting season to date by a long way. Up until this season, we had planted around 570,000 trees in total, but no more than 300,000 in a season.

“This year we have had a far bigger area to cover – about 70 hectares – so it’s really exciting to have planted half a million trees in one push. This takes our total so far to over a million trees planted.

“The planting crew has done an outstanding job – planting about 75,000 plants a week.”

Photo: These young native trees were planted in 2019 and photographed in 2021.

Photo: The same native trees photographed in 2025.

The plants include mānuka, kanuka and a mix of other species including hebe, māhoe, karamū, makomako, tī kōuka (cabbage tree), puahou (five finger), rewarewa and kahikatea.

The plants were grown from seeds eco-sourced from the existing native vegetation growing in the area, and were cultivated at a west Auckland nursery until they were ready to go in the ground.

“This ensures we are replicating the natural state of the forest as much as possible,” Talbot says.

The regeneration programme is expected to continue until about 2035 when the last remaining pine trees in the catchments are expected to have been harvested. The area will then be opened to the public for everyone to enjoy.