Current activities

Current activities of the Trust include the re-instatement of old field trials, the running of workshops to communicate information on indigenous forest establishment and management, planning and establishment of major planting trials, speaking to interested groups about the work of the Trust and the publication of information on indigenous forestry and conservation.

THE ARCHIVES PROJECT DATABASE

INTRODUCTION

This project was initiated in order to collect in one place a comprehensive database of past research work about indigenous timber trees. While mainly concerned with the establishment and management of planted indigenous species it is also includes work involving the ecology and management of natural forests, which might be applicable to planted forests. Much past research has been published and this is fairly well recorded in a series of bibliographies; for example the annotated bibliography by Tony Beveridge on work at Whirinaki. What is not available is a rapid and easy method of discovering the existence of unpublished material which often covers uncompleted work that could be useful to people involved in indigenous forest research and management today. This project enables those involved in new research to avoid duplicating previous work or spending a disproportionate amount of time searching for details of earlier work.

In 2004 Tāne’s Tree Trust was funded by the Sustainable Farming Fund to begin the work of locating old research and trial material. We are also grateful to the Lotteries Grants Board for funding for this project. The remaining finance required has come from the Trust’s own resources and includes a considerable amount of “In Kind” contributions by Trustees and others.

The work began in July 2004 with database development by Mike Cochrane of Landcare Research. Several people, including Tony Beveridge, Danielle Whitam, Ian Barton and Peter Berg were then commissioned to search a wide range of sources. Sources searched included Archives New Zealand in Christchurch, Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland and our thanks are extended to the staff of these for their considerable assistance. The old research files at Scion (Forest Research) were intensely mined by Tony Beveridge and a great deal of useful information obtained which was entered into the database by Ann McSweeney. Other searches were made of University Library databases for all theses which may contain useful material, and other depositories such as the Matakohe and Auckland museums. Some privately held material is also included.

THE FINAL PRODUCT

Here is the link to the Archives Database. It has a simple keyword search engine (i.e. it does not use boolean operators such as "and", "or", "not").

Some entries are quite short. For example most thesis entries only contain information obtained from university library entries. Others, which have data on important studies, are longer. Wherever possible all contain enough information for a researcher to ascertain whether or not a search of the archived material will be of benefit to them.

Because copies of some project records are held in different repositories (eg, Forest Research and Archives New Zealand) some project entries will be duplicated although not necessarily exactly the same. As these are discovered they will be deleted / amalgamated / cross-referenced as appropriate.

In addition a list of any material discovered which could, with minimal work, be published will be prepared and funding sought to progressively publish this -perhaps by Tāne’s Tree Trust- as reports. An example of material which might be published is an edited volume containing the minutes, discussions and reports of the annual kauri conferences held in the 1950’s, and which are known to contain a great deal of useful information.

UPDATING THE DATABASE

The master copy of the database is held by Tāne’s Tree Trust and will be periodically updated by adding to the items already listed or adding new ones. These updates will be available on the website.

People working in the area of indigenous forest research are also invited to include their current projects on the database. A data entry form will be forwarded on request to Ian Barton.