Tony Druce and Ian Atkinson first discovered the 0.6 hectare Te Marua Bush remnant in the late 1950s during a Hutt Catchment survey.  Ian describes the area as very special, largely because it is one of the few remaining stands of lowland matai, totara and maire left in the western Wellington region.  He estimates that some of the matai in the stand are 200-300 years old and says he was very surprised to find it surviving, despite being grazed by stock, on the edge of State Highway 2.

At the Wellington Botanical Society 50th Jubilee in 1989, Ian chose Te Marua Bush as the subject of his address.  As a result, in 1990 the Botanical Society approached Greater Wellington, the owners of Te Marua bush, with a view to forming a partnership to ensure the survival of this special slice of natural heritage.  Greater Wellington responded positively to the approach.

Work to protect the area began in February 1991.  The major management challenge faced was weed control.  Large sycamore trees were a big problem inside the bush, requiring continued cutting and poisoning or removal over the years.

Saplings still appear today, requiring ongoing vigilance.  Barbara Mitcalfe, an active Botanical Society member, recalls with a grimace the thigh-high Tradescantia (wandering willy) carpeting the forest floor.  Both Ian and Barbara say that in the early days they used to feel quite depressed at times about the size of the task.

The Botanical Society has two working bees a year at the site.  In the early days of the project, they rolled up endless mats of the groundcover weed Tradescantia into giant rolls "like Bremworth carpet", which were removed from the site by Greater Wellington staff.  "It became clear that we weren't winning the battle," says Barbara, so we approached Greater Wellington for help.  They funded a contractor to spray the Tradescantia, with great success, and we can now control it ourselves.'  Barbara describes how these days group members walk shoulder to shoulder from one side of the block to the other, collecting every tiny piece of Tradescantia they can find.

Fencing the site was another important step, undertaken by the Conservation Corps in 1998.  Even through the area was no longer grazed, Barbara says the fence was important to create a physical boundary defining the area being managed.

Te Marua Bush had also been hit hard by posssums in the past.  However, over the past 6 years the Regional Council has been controlling possums with bait stations, making the area a "much safter refuge for important native plants and animals."  Barbara points out a threatened native mistletoe ( Ileostylus micranthus) that was introduced to the bush from a nearby reserve and is now thriving.

Some planting has been done on the site by the local Forest and Bird branch and the Wellington Botanical Society, using plants grown from seeds from the Bush, with the Regional Council funding their potting soil.  The planting has been around the edges in places to provide shelter and wind protection, and to fill a light gap in the canopy that resulted from weed control.  Over time, Barbara and Ian have seen the natural re-introduction of tawa seedlings in the bush, probably as a result of bird seed dispersal and the removal of Tradescantia allowing seeds to germinate and grow.  Ian guesses that these tiny tawa seedlings will replace the mature canopy podocarps on the site in hundreds of years to come, if they don't succumb to droughts.

Other challenges faced by the group include the dumping of rubbish.  One of the intial jobs was to remove a legacy of dumping, including things like old TVs.  Greater Wellington Regional Council has erected signs reminding people that dumping is illegal.  The group recently faced the threat of road widening on the adjacent State Highway and lobbied hard to make sure the bush was impacted as little as possible.

The group is adamant that the continued survival of this special remnant depends on conservation management.  Ian says, "We've got to go on making an input to the area, because nature doesn't care if we don't and the weeds will quickly take hold again in such a small fragment."  Ian and Barbara both emphasise the need to speak up when help is needed to protect areas such as Te Marua bush.  Agency funding is often available but you need to keep records and provide well-documented information to support your requests for help.

The group have now reached the point where they've dealt with the harder management jobs and the Wellington Botanical Society has drafted a set of principles to guide their future actions for the site.  They'll be looking at things like what sort of species should be planted on the site to maintain its ecological integrity, and how much replanting is necessary.  Barbara says a management plan is a useful tool and can be as simple as one page outlining the main priorities for the area, to help guide working bees.