Kauri Rescue has received a short term grant from Tiakina Kauri to cover the period to the end of June 2026 to expand our operations outside the Auckland Region.

We have been using it to offer treatment opportunities to landowners in Northland and to support our iwi partners Te Uri o Hau Environs to develop a phosphite treatment plan for their maunga at Pukekaroro in Kaiwaka. We are working on this project with the support of Northland Regional Council and the Department of Conservation to pool all the information available on the health of the kauri on the maunga.

It is really exciting to be able to work on a collaborative project like this to expand our work and enable effective application of treatment in such an important ngahere / forest over future years. Huge thanks to Tiakina Kauri and Northland Regional Council for the financial support.

The Kauri Rescue team enjoyed a stunning sunny winter morning planting kauri saplings with Te Kawerau ā Maki and friends.

It was such an honour to be invited along to help bring these kauri home to Te Piringa in the Cascades, Waitākere Ranges from where their seeds were gathered for the Healthy Trees, Healthy Futures research project at Scion.

It was great to see everyone and we look forward to watching these babies grow and thrive into a new generation of kauri at this special place.

Thanks to some funding from Northland Regional Council and Tiakina Kauri we have been able to offer support to landowners in Northland with kauri infected with kauri dieback disease for the first time.

Eileen was the first recipient of one of our phosphite treatment kits and she said “you have given me hope and lifted the despair I was feeling about my kauri having kauri dieback disease. Thank you for your help.”

Eileen got stuck in straight away and within a couple of weeks had completed the treatment for all her trees. Well done Eileen!

The Kauri Rescue team recently attended a well attended Kauri Ora hui in Whangarei hosted by Ngati Hine. Dr Ian Horner did a presentation giving an optimistic view of kauri dieback management and Mels took along the Kauri Rescue stall.

The team stayed overnight at the marae and very much enjoyed the hospitality, meeting everyone and hearing about all the projects being undertaken across Te Tai Tokerau to protect and enhance kauri health. Thanks to Ngati Hine for hosting and for the photo.

The Kauri Rescue team has been treating an area of kauri dieback infection in Kauri Park, Birkenhead with phosphite and creating a buffer around the infected trees to contain the infection. This work has been a fantastic collaboration with Auckland Council, Te Kawerau ā Maki and Pest Free Kaipatiki to deliver this mahi, which is the second local park we have treated this summer. 

Huge thanks to our hardworking teams of Shannon, Alistair, Zacc, Alex, Yue Chin and Kate from Auckland Council, Shanti from Pest Free Kaipatiki and Avril, Sarah, Rebecca and Mels from Kauri Rescue.

That’s a wrap for our local parks work for this season, but we’re already planning next summer’s priority sites for this project.

The Kauri Rescue team has been back to the Te Piringa area of the Cascades in the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park to reassess the health of the 60 big taonga kauri trees that we treated with phosphite in May 2024. Two years into this trial of applying various phosphite dose rates to trees over 200cm girth and the results are looking really good. The trees are responding well and we are getting useful data about what we need to do for future treatment of large kauri. Thanks to Te Kawerau ā Maki and Auckland Council for supporting this important research work.

Kauri Rescue has just received a small grant from Northland Regional Council to help us expand our support to Northland landowners with kauri dieback problems. We are grateful for NRC’s support, and hope it marks the beginning of a long relationship.

Learn about our local Kauri and how to protect them. Join us for an informative session where Dr Mels Barton will demonstrate how to understand the health of your Kauri, look after them and protect them for the next generation. This session will be held outdoors, amongst our kauri at the Colin McCahon Museum in Titirangi.

Caring for your kauri with Dr Mels Barton
Saturday 28 March 2026, 10 am – 11 am
67 Otitori Bay Road, Titirangi
RSVP by Thursday 19 March is essential. Please reserve your space by emailing mccahon@mccahonhouse.org.nz

Image: Emily Karaka, Kauri Ora (red), 2022

The Kauri Rescue team had a very productive trip to the Coromandel where we treated a small pocket of kauri dieback infection on a huge private property in Kennedy Bay. Really hopeful that we have got in early enough to contain it and prevent further spread. Huge thanks to Tiakina Kauri for funding this work and to Nick for organising and the Hovell family for their hospitality. Great mahi from all our fabulous volunteers, it was a huge treat to visit such a stunning location.

The Kauri Rescue team recently returned to a property we know very well to help landowner Mike Stanley to reassess the health of the more than 300 kauri trees he treated with phosphite in 2019.

We were really pleased to see how stable the majority of the trees were over 6 years after treatment. There was lots of evidence of peeling away of old basal bleeds with healthy bark growing underneath. We found only a handful of trees that need to be re-treated, so that is very encouraging that the phosphite treatment is continuing to be effective after such a long time.

In the photo above you can clearly see the 3 horizontal paint pen marks above a patch of new bark on this kauri.  These marks were placed when the tree was treated in December 2019. The lowest mark indicates the highest point of the basal bleed at the time of treatment. You can see that the old bleed has peeled off and only a small portion of it remains at the base of the tree under the marks. Healthy clean new bark has grown underneath since the tree was treated. By the next time we reassess this tree we expect that the entire bleed will have disappeared.

Huge thanks to our super Ambassador Guenter, plus Kauri Rescue staff Avril and Mels as well as our Trust Chair Mike Stanley for all their hard work on this property. The trees are doing really well.