Heritage golf course and wildlife park back up and running following extensive storm damage

New Zealand’s foremost dual-operating golf club and native wildlife sanctuary is now fully back up and running – following months of extensive remediation work undertaken to repair damaged caused by Cyclone Gabrielle at the beginning of the year.

Wairakei Golf + Sanctuary in Taupo was one of the many central North Island golf clubs severely impacted by the strong winds and torrential downpours which struck in February.

In the space of 24 hours, some 1800 trees on the undulating park-like Taupo course were toppled – with several hundred metres of the venue’s 5.5-kilometre predator-proof fence subsequently destroyed due to trees collapsing on fencing framework and netting.

In 2012, an agreement was established between Wairakei Golf + Sanctuary and the Department of Conservation to make the most of conservation and restoration opportunities within the sanctuary – including using the predator free environment as a crèche for kiwi chicks. The wildlife enclosure now sustains a dedicated kiwi incubation, hatching and brooding facility.

The two-metre-high predator-proof fencing encasing Wairakei Golf + Sanctuary had been specially designed to prevent mammals such as rats, hedgehogs, possums, stoats, weasels and feral cats from entering the parkland reserve – which is home to kiwi, takahe, fallow deer, and New Zealand falcons, in addition to pheasants, guinea fowl, and ducks.

Cleaning up the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle saw Wairakei Golf + Sanctuary greenkeeping staff and lumber removal contractors haul out hundreds of horizontal trunks – which were sold as prime export quality logs – while a mobile sawmill operated on site to cut timber for the club’s future use.

Simultaneously, several truck and trailer loads of wood chip went off to Kinleith Mill for electricity generation, while hundreds of smaller branches were mulched and spread around the course to cover unsightly areas which had been exposed as a result of the storm deforestation.

Caption: The damaged predator fence and fallen trees at Wairakei golf course, following Cyclone Gabrielle.

Manoeuvring heavy vehicles across the course’s fairways was a real exercise in turf management to ensure any damage to fairways was minimised. The process was made easier by much of Wairakei’s fairways being laid on a free-draining pumice-based sub-soil layer.

Wairakei's operations general manager Warren Collet, said that after nine months of hard work by greenkeeping staff – often frustrated by an unusually long and wet winter – the course was now back to its full glory … including welcoming recently hatched takahe chicks born in spring, along with the 300th kiwi chick to have been raised at the sanctuary facility.

Said Collet: “Straight after the storm, we had to completely close the course for two and a half weeks. We were fortunate enough to get a forestry crew in here straight away, and they worked seven days a week which allowed us to get nine holes open by the end of February.

“Then they moved onto the back nine, and by the end of the first week in March we finally got all 18 holes open.

“We were also very fortunate the Maungatautari ecological team arrived the day after the storm, and the fences were all repaired within 24 hours. We didn’t lose any of the native wildlife, and nothing escaped as far as we can ascertain.

“We were blessed that no greens, tee blocks or fairways were damaged to any extent apart from debris falling down the left-hand sides of the thirteenth and fourteenth fairways, and some broken cart paths.”

Collett said that with the removal of hundreds of mature trees lining some of the course’s fairways and hillside, several holes at Wairakei now had a totally different vista for players.

“We’ve been very happy with the way the course has returned,” he said.

“Our greenkeepers have already undertaken substantial tree replacement with 250 saplings transplanted over the past eight months, and more seedlings scheduled to be sown over the coming year. As they bed in, the course will continue to mature in a new direction over the space of a decade … and the decades to come.”