Ngā Kairauhi Papa | Forever protected
The Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy Initiative (QCC) has now concluded. Although we no longer offer QCC covenants, please contact your regional representative if you would like to protect an area on your land with an Open Space Covenant.
QEII National Trust was endorsed to deliver New Zealand’s contribution to the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy Initiative (QCC).
The QCC was an initiative to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s long reign and leadership of the Commonwealth. The QCC aimed to create a network of native forest throughout the Commonwealth, and QEII was the link to the QCC in New Zealand.
From 2015/16 the Government funded a three-year project for QEII to approve additional forest covenants annually that satisfied international criteria as part of the Commonwealth wide QCC programme as well as meeting the standard for a QEII covenant.
QEII is proud to have had a three-year involvement with the QCC programme by establishing a special class of covenant to protect significant areas of indigenous forest.
We worked with private landowners to establish a series of protected native forests under the QCC banner. Over the course of the three years, QEII approved 44 Queens Commonwealth Canopy covenants all round Aotearoa/New Zealand protecting 2,831ha in total of different types of native forest on private land. The average size of these protected forests is 64ha and the largest single forest that has been protected under this programme is 613ha in size. All these forests met national priorities for biodiversity protection on private land, and many will be habitat for endangered species. Together they are a hugely important contribution to the protection of New Zealand’s unique biodiversity.
