Seventy years after Arnold Cork set out to create a forest with the help of school children in an area of the Golden Downs forests, students are still planting and learning about a working production forest.
The programme was created to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne, hence the Coronation Forest title, and over the years more than 40,000 local school children have planted seedlings in the forest.
Tasman Mayor, Tim King, who attended the 70th celebrations last week, was one of those school children when he was a student at Brightwater School.
Over the years, the forest has passed between different companies and now OneFortyOne New Zealand Forests manages the area and supports the forestry education programme, leasing the land from Ngāti Toa. The project is one of the longest-running, privately-funded educational programmes in New Zealand.
General manager Shaun Truelock says Coronation Forest has become a piece of living history for the region and many of those who planted trees in the 1950s have since returned with their children and grandchildren.
“Every year, hundreds of school children from local schools participate in tree planting and plantation forestry activities such as tree measuring, guessing the age of pines, and learning more about the local ecosystem.”
