How 280,000 planted trees transformed New Zealand's Tiritiri Matangi

Rangitoto framed - Tiritiri Matangi IslandOff the coast of Auckland, in New Zealand’s Hauraki Gulf, lies an island that looks like a slice of untouched wilderness. Dense native forest blankets its hills, rare birds call from the canopy and visitors walk along quiet tracks surrounded by ferns and flowering shrubs. Yet just a few decades ago, Tiritiri Matangi was a very different place: a grassy, heavily farmed island with only about 4% of its original forest cover remaining.The transformation of Tiritiri Matangi from a degraded landscape into a world-renowned conservation sanctuary is one of New Zealand’s most inspiring environmental success stories. And at the heart of that transformation were 280,000 trees, planted by thousands of volunteers over a single decade, according to 2013 study t