Mahakirau Forest Sanctuary

The Mahakirau Forest Estate comprises almost 600 hectares of native forest divided into 24 private properties with introduced animal and plant controls. MFESI's vision is to manage Mahakirau Forest Estate as an eco sanctuary so that it will act as a ‘wellspring’ for indigenous flora and fauna, performing as a wildlife corridor for the Coromandel, and contributing to the wealth of our national biodiversity. They continually seek to improve their pest control initiatives to develop an effective biodiversity protection programme, which concentrates on assisting the management of high priority, rare species found at Mahakirau, providing a unique contribution to the progression of Coromandel’s (and New Zealand’s) community conservation journey. The Mahakirau Forest Estate has been ranked as holding “outstanding wildlife value”, including the extremely rare Coromandel striped gecko, Hochstetter’s and Archey’s frogs, North Island kaka and North Island brown kiwi, alongside significant indigenous vegetation. Helms