NZ Conservation Ecology & Really Old Trees

We recently took our first nature walk as a group since I arrived.  I really enjoyed tramping around in the woods.  Our program administrator, Ogre Jon, knows a lot about New Zealand forests, which means I get to learn a lot when I’m tramping with him.  For example, we spent a while discussing the landscape around us.  Here he discusses the reasons why we are working to restore native plant species in the valley below:

We went way off the track for the majority of the walk, so I got plenty of exercise climbing and twisting under, over, and around everything in my path.

The highlight of the walk was our end destination:  a 1,300 year old kauri in the back of the valley behind our land.

One thousand, three hundred years old!!!

Here are more pictures from the day.  The album is fairly small, because I left out all of the pictures I took of particular plant species (not terribly interesting).