For those who don’t know, Zac’s Track is named after Zac Pearson who was a keen mountain biker and highly motivated Supporter. After his premature passing his family set up a trust that offers considerable financial support to the restoration and maintenance of the area of Makara Peak that Zac’s track runs through.

That makes a huge difference to the potential for restoration because it’s a fierce environment out there! It’s the most exposed area of the park with winds pounding the track and vegetation alike. In addition, seedlings get hit hard by goats and bunnies making regeneration a tricky prospect. That said, less palatable plants have been recovering remarkably well after significant early plantings by the Supporters from 1998 to 2008. In 2018 we decided that now that we had resources it was time to make a restoration plan specific to this area of the park.

The restoration plan concluded that first off, we need to get rid of the goats. WCC contracts a great professional hunter to come in regularly to cull goats within Makara Peak and many of the surrounding properties. While the goat numbers are quite low at the moment, this is the exception and not the norm. We therefore upgraded the standard farm fence with heavy duty mesh to keep the goats out.

With the Zac's Track area clear of goats we set about preparing gaps in the thick gorse and barberry where 700 seedlings could be planted in their shelter. This is tough work so we received a Conservation Fund grant from WCC to hire contractors to take care of it for us. Even though the exotic scrub offers shelter from the northerlies, the site is currently only suitable for the hardiest species, such as tree hebe. As part of the Conservation Fund we also received two planting days from Conservation Volunteers New Zealand. Conservation Volunteers were lucky with the weather and planted over 500 trees in those two days. The planting was then finished off by contractors using funding from Zac’s Trust. To finish things off we sprayed the seedlings with rabbit repellant to keep their nibbling to a minimum. This is just the first of three phases of the restoration plan. In addition, there will be a significant upgrade to Zac's track (and the northern section of Makara Peak in general). This will be one area of the park to watch change dramatically over the next 10 years.

Thanks to Ian “Zac” Pearson and his family for their generosity and on-going financial support. Thanks also to the Nikau Foundation who manage the grant process on their behalf. Also thank you to Peter Russell of Aotearoa Biosecurity Co. for helping develop a plan. Thanks to Conservation Volunteers New Zealand for their extreme planting days. Jon Rosemergy did a great job upgrading the fence. Kaitiaki has done fantastic work as the contractor cutting holes in the gorse and finishing off the planting. They are also constantly staying on top of noxious weeds in the park. And last but not least, thanks to WCC for the Conservation Fund grant and their support of Makara Peak as a whole.

Zac’s Track project update