Eastland Heli
Ray Worters and Eastland Heli: guarding forests from the sky
There’s a certain irony to the work that Ray Worters and his company, Eastland Heli, do for us.
During winter Ray and his colleague Anthony ‘Ginge’ Ryan fly pine seedlings into plantation areas for forestry companies. Then, during summer, they load their helicopters with herbicide and head on over to help us kill wilding pines as part of our pine-to-native forest conversion initiative.
Maungataniwha Pine Forest is a 6,000-hectare logging concession that we now own and manage. Just three decades ago this was mature native forest. But then it was logged progressively and burned before being put under pine.
Now, in the largest such privately-funded initiative yet seen in New Zealand, we are turning the entire area back into regenerating native forest. The wheel is turning full circle. Under a hand-back agreement with the logging concessionaire we have progressively taken control of harvested areas and are overseeing its return to its natural state.
There is sufficient residual seed of native species within the soil to enable regeneration without the need for additional seeding. The grasses are first off the block – native species like hookgrass and toetoe. Then shrubs or small trees like mahoe and wineberry. These are followed by mountain cabbage-tree, kanuka and native fuchsia.
Once these species have re-colonised the land the stage is set for larger stuff such as red and silver beech.
Native birds such as kereru and silvereyes play a vital role in the regeneration process, spreading seed and propagating the land. Once we see these guys on the land we know the battle is half won.
A major challenge, however, is the regeneration of pine seedlings which emerge and effectively crowd out the slower growing native forest species.
They’re difficult to get rid of. We try to rip them out manually where possible but where the terrain is too difficult to get a ground team in, or where the re-growth is too dense, we have to resort to spraying them from the air. This is where Ray, Ginge and Eastland Heli come in.
Ray has been running his business, Eastland Heli Services Ltd, for 10 years. But he was flying around the East Coast in choppers for 35 years before that. He now has 18,000 hours under his belt.
He flies a Hughes 500D and a Robinson R44 which he uses for agricultural spraying.
Eastland Heli is based in Gisborne and its operational focus is very much between East Cape in the North and our property at Maungataniwha in the south. The company sprays crops for local farmers, undertakes surveys for Gisborne District Council, helps Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) fight fires, and gets involved in rescue and recovery work during natural disasters. It was very busy during Cyclone Gabrielle, servicing remote and distant homes and communities isolated by the immense damage to roads and bridges.
The company also does a lot of animal and pest control – particularly for the Department of Conservation.
Ray and his wife Wendy have deliberately kept the business small, mainly so that it won’t be too difficult to get out of when the time finally comes for Ray to hang up his flying boots and retire.
Wendy is does all the administration, health and safety and compliance work, leaving Ray free to do what he does best - fly.
When they work at Maungataniwha, Ray, Ginge and their crewman and starter pilot Arama tend to stay on the properties to save on ferry costs. Arama drives to the site with the company’s fuel tanker and the spray mixture. They camp out in one of the many hunting and trapping huts on the property. The area they spray varies on an annual basis, from a couple of hundred hectares to about 500 or 600 hectares.
Like the regeneration effort itself, the story behind the spraying operation is a real example of ‘suck it and see’ – figuring out what works and what doesn’t. The optimum time for getting rid of wilding pine is within two years of germination, after which they become more difficult to remove. The team needed a spray formula that knocked the wilding pines on the head while giving the natives a chance to establish themselves and flourish.
When Ray first started spraying Maungataniwha he brought with him the rep from AGPRO, the firm supplying the chemicals used in the herbicide. Together they drove around the property to assess the types of chemicals they should use, the concentration and the saturation rates. The resulting concoction is known as the ‘brew’.
“It was pretty clear almost immediately that, given the terrain and the density of wilding pines, the saturation had to be towards the top end of the scale,” Ray says.
In addition to the spraying, Ray and Ginge assist with pest control on our neighbouring property in the Maungataniwha Native Forest and at nearby Pohokura Station. Their involvement is particularly valuable when it comes to helping contractor Mike Walker extend or install trap-lines in remote sections of the properties. Typically, seven traps are installed per kilometre. These are flown in, along with the two-man teams needed to install them, and dropped at the highest point so the installers can work their way downhill.
Ray knows the Maungataniwha and Pohokura areas well from a previous life.
“I used to shoot deer in there during the late 80s and early 90s so I could sell the venison to exporting companies.”
He describes flying conditions on both properties as “challenging”. With creek beds at about 1500 feet above sea-level and ridge crests at about 3,000 feet above sea-level there is a significant variation in operating ceiling.
“When we’re up at 3,000 feet above sea-level the air is thin and the ability of our machines to operate while carry heavy loads of brew is greatly limited.”
For this reason, Ray and Ginge like to wait until there is a big area of high pressure over the properties before spraying. This makes the air a lot denser and gives those rotor blades greater purchase - basically the helicopter performs better.
Both men enjoy the remoteness of the Trust’s properties and describe the bird-life as amazing.
“The bird-song is just one sign of the impact of the Trust’s work on these properties,” Ray says.
“The other sign is what we see as we fly over this area – the colours of our native plants contrasting with the uniform green of pine plantations.
“It’s wonderful to see and really rewarding to know that we’ve played a part in changing this view.”
