A new book out this year puts the spotlight on one of New Zealand's quietest but most effective conservation success stories. Caring for Kahurangi, written by Sandy and Robin Toy and published by Potton and Burton, retails for $59.99 and documents a remarkable quarter-century of volunteer work at the top of the South Island.
At the centre of the story is Friends of Flora, a volunteer group that has spent the past 25 years looking after the Flora Saddle area on the edge of Kahurangi National Park. What started as a community response to collapsing birdlife in the beech forest has grown into one of the country's standout community-led conservation projects. The group's predator control and habitat work has helped native birds — robins, kaka and other forest species — claw their way back in an area where they were once fading fast.
Kahurangi itself is a park many international visitors barely know, which is part of its appeal. It's one of New Zealand's largest national parks, stretching from the bucolic Motueka Valley to the wild west coast, and it packs in the Heaphy Track, the Oparara Basin's limestone arches, and some of the country's remotest backcountry tramping. The book doubles as a window into how the park's wildlife is actually being protected — not just by rangers, but by locals who turn up with trap lines and bait boxes, year after year.
Reviewers in New Zealand's outdoor press have called the book as beautiful as it is inspiring, and that's the point: it's part coffee-table photography, part real-world story about what volunteer effort can achieve over decades. For anyone planning a trip to the Nelson-Tasman region, it adds a layer of meaning to a day walk from Flora Saddle or a longer tramp into the park — the birdsong you hear there exists because people fought for it.
Why does this matter to travellers? Because Kahurangi offers something increasingly rare: wilderness without crowds, and now a good pre-trip read that explains what you're walking through. If you're headed for Abel Tasman and want something wilder and quieter next door, this book will likely convince you to add a few days in Kahurangi. It would also make a solid souvenir or gift for anyone who loves New Zealand's backcountry.
Story via Wilderness Magazine NZ.
