Seven Peaks Walk: Saving Critically Endangered Sallywood Swamp Forest On Lord Howe Island
Categories: News, Uncategorised
Pinetrees Lodge – home to the Seven Peaks Walk – is playing a vital role leading the restoration of the world’s critically endangered Sallywood Swamp Forest.
A plant community dominated by the Sallywood tree, Lord Howe Island is the only place in the world that the species is found.
With over 95% of the original forest destoryed over decades of grazing, the Pinetrees Lodge Team (headed by former UN ecologist and Seven Peaks Walk owner and guide Luke Hanson) joined with the Lord Howe Island board on a restoration project to save the trees from extinction.
The project has included fencing one hectare of floodplain, extensive removal of invasive grasses and weeds (oleander, kiuyu, thistle), and planting more than 6,000 tress and palms typically seen in the Sallywood Swap Forests.
With $100k in funding secured from the NSW Government’s Environmental Trust and another $100k matched from Pinetrees Lodge, the team have rolled out phase one and completed phase two last year, replicating a second one hectare site to the south of the first site.
This second site has now connected with the lowland forest in Edies Glen, restored by the Friends of Lord Howe Island – a bush conservation group – over the past two decades.
Also assisting is Lord Howe Island Nursery, who have readied 5,000 seedlings ready for planting over the next 10 years – an extraordinary commitment from many teams.
Having become one of the first carbon neutral hotels in the world in December 2020, this is yet another exemplary show from Pinetrees Lodge and Seven Peaks Walk of continuing to invest financially and with action to the conservation of this amazing island and the environment at large.