The forest
Rangitatau Forest
408 hectares in the Kai Iwi catchment near Whanganui — our living example of the transition to permanent native forest.
Where it is, and why
Rangitatau lies in the Kai Iwi catchment, a short distance from Whanganui on the lower west coast of the North Island. The 408-hectare block was selected deliberately for its proximity to the national park — placing it within reach of a large, intact source of indigenous biodiversity. Birds, seed and the wider web of forest life can move more readily between protected bush and land that is being returned to native forest, giving the transition a head start that an isolated block could never have.
It is the kind of land the transition is made for: better suited, over the long run, to permanent indigenous forest than to repeated rotations of exotic timber.
Working with the community
This is a project with our neighbours, not just on the land.
Rangitatau sits within a living community in the Kai Iwi catchment. The people who live, farm and whakapapa here have the deepest stake in what the forest becomes — and the longest memory of how this land has changed. We are committed to working alongside the local community as the transition unfolds: listening first, sharing what we learn, and shaping the project together rather than around them.
If you live in the Kai Iwi catchment or near Whanganui, have a connection to this whenua, or simply want to understand what's happening at Rangitatau, we'd genuinely like to hear from you.
What we're watching
Rangitatau is where the ideas on The Transition meet real soil, weather and time. As the work progresses we intend to share what we observe — how native species establish under the existing canopy, what the carbon and biodiversity outcomes look like, and what we'd do differently — so the next landowner has a clearer path than we did.