This cache has been refreshed for Conservation Week 2016 (10-18 September) with three Air New Zealand mini torches and tags for the first three to find. If you take a selfie with the tag and post it on DOC’s facebook page: facebook.com/wildside you will go in the draw for one of 30 spot prizes. If you don’t find a torch you can still enter the DOC National Geocaching Challenge by first logging your find onto the geocaching website, then adding your details on the Geocaching Challenge page on the DOC website. The more DOC caches you find, the more chances you have to go in the draw for other prizes and the grand prize of return flights for four anywhere on the Air New Zealand Domestic network. Competition closes after 18 September 2016 – so get caching!
This is one of the last remaining pockets of low-land podocarp and hardwood forests left on the Canterbury Plains. The vast Canterbury Plains were once cloaked with swamp / wetlands, low-land podocarp forests, interspersed with drier woodland shrubs and tussock grass and shrublands.
The first arrivals, the Maori around the 13th century, saw much of these lands periodically cleared by fire - either accidental or intentional for hunting and gathering.
In the 1800’s, European immigrants further cleared and drained the fertile plains for cropping and agriculture to create the dry open Canterbury Plains as we know them today.
While pockets of beech-podocarp forests remain on the foothills, nearly all of the low-land podocarp-hardwood forests are gone from the flat Canterbury Plains; suffice a few private small stands protected through the foresight of early settlers.
Only two significant stands of this type of forest now remain; the stunning 7.8 ha Riccarton (Deans) Bush in the heart of Christchurch, and Lords Bush.
At 12 ha, Lords Bush is the largest stand and is now managed by DOC as a Scenic Reserve