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The Brook Sanctuary - Returning nature to Nelson

The Bowater Motor Group are very pleased to be working with the Brook Sanctuary on their project by providing them with some prime space in the Bowater Honda showroom on Rutherford Street to operate their fund raising office. This inner city presence will hopefully make it a little easier for them to raise funds and move closer to the goal of erecting the 14km pest proof fence.

This section of the website will be the place where we share news from the Brook Sanctuary team, their progress and opportunities for us all to help this very worthwhile local cause.

The Brook Waimarama Sanctuary is a community-based initiative working to create a pest-free wildlife sanctuary close to the Nelson city centre in New Zealand.
Integral to creating the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary is construction of a pest-proof fence 14km long, to enclose the area, and to eradicate all the pest mammals within it. This will enable the re-creation of a historic piece of New Zealand which today is only found on a few offshore islands. Resident birds, reptiles and invertebrates will flourish and species previously lost from the area will be re-introduced.

The Brook Waimarama Sanctuar project was launched in 2004 and has strong community involvement and support. You can also learn more by visiting their website here: www.brooksanctuary.org.nz

Bowaters are recognised for getting behind the fence

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Bowater Honda CEO Chris Bowater accepts a certificate for a sponsored fencepost from Brook Waimarama Sanctuary's General Manager Hudson Dodd


We bid the team from the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary's Campaign Office a fond farewell last week from the space we donated to them in the top showroom of Bowater Honda. The renovation programme we have in place for the moving of the Honda and Hyundai dealerships has now shifted up a gear now that Bowater Honda has moved into it's new showroom in Achilles Ave. This has freed up the showroom on the corner of Rutherford and Hardy street to begin the transformation into the new Bowater Hyundai showroom.

It was a bittersweet moment as the Brook Sanctuary's General Manager Hudson Dodd presented Bowater Honda CEO Chris Bowater with a certificate for a sponsored fencepost as recognition of the support the Bowater Motor Group has given the organisation over the past year.

The Bowater Motor Group has enjoyed providing a space for the central campaign office of the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary, and this was done with no expectation of any kind. We were genuinely pleased to be able to help this great, local, community focused initiative as they entered the public fundraising phase. By enabling them to have a presence within our highly visible showroom right on one of central Nelson's busiest traffic intersections was a gift we could easily provide this vital environmental project - a project we were very happy to get behind as a community focused organisation.

It is exciting to one day be able to see our name on a fencepost near the main entrance, and something that the up and coming generations of the Bowater family, and all those that work alongside them, will most certainly treasure. It is indeed a wonderful surprise and a great legacy for the company to be honoured with, and we are most grateful for the gift. 

Brook Sanctuary & Bowater Honda launch the fund raising drive to Get behind the Fence

The gathered supporters of the Brook Sanctuary
Over 150 supporters of the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary gathered at Bowater Honda listen to Brook Waimarama Sanctuary General Manager Hudson Dodd detailing the need for a pest proof fence.


Fundraising for the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary pest-proof fence got a big boost with the official launch of the public phase of the campaign at Bowater Honda on Friday night.

Over 150 invited guests were treated to an evening of information, celebration and motivation to take the initiative and "Get behind the Fence". The evening was also an opportunity to celebrate the new campaign office situated in the top showroom of Bowater Honda's central city dealership. This new central city location will hopefully make the new phase of fundraising a little easier, with a more visible location in the heart of Nelson city, and the chance for those passing by to wander in and see progress of the Sanctuary project and even meet a few of the sanctuary locals, like the 3 very handsome gecko's in the campaign office at the moment!

It was a great turnout and a very successful launch event, with invited guests able to mix and mingle for the first part of the evening and talk through the project with a strong contingent of Brook Sanctuary Waimarama Trust members, Sanctuary staff, local Tasman District and Nelson City Councillors, local MP and Minister of Conservation Hon Dr Nick Smith, and Tasman District Mayor Richard Kempthorne.

The two sides of the fence - the Nelson Mail reports

The money is flowing in and the birdlife flowing back ... but it's early days yet.

The Brook Sanctuary
Nelson Mail reporter Naomi Arnold
checks progress on the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary in this great article from The Nelson Mail.


The birds are coming down out of the hills and back into our lives. There's been a skinny brown weka poking around the bushes near the Nelson Post Shop during the last couple of weeks, and others spotted running through the gardens of The Wood.

There are more kereru weighing down city branches, more tui on the flaxes, and more bellbirds in Richmond gardens. In fact, there are more birds around here than there have been for years.

Their increasing numbers are due to the pest-trapping programmes in the hills from Richmond to Delaware Bay, which have been wiping out rats, stoats, possums, and more.

But those behind the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary, an ambitious conservation project at the head of Nelson's Brook Valley, want more.

The old water reserve is already a biological haven, a dense pocket of mature beech, podocarp and broadleaf forest, some of which has never been felled. As trapping, tree-planting, weeding and track works progress in the valley - which includes 17,000 pests killed in fewer than six years and 80km of new tracks cut - it's also become full of new life. Pairs of little green rifleman, each weighing less than a $1 coin, have been spotted raising successful clutches. There are more robins, more falcons, and trappers even report hearing kaka at the tops.

Brook Sanctuary general manager Hudson Dodd says all that is excellent news - but only to a point. "It tells the story of a need for a fence."

The trust behind the sanctuary wants to build a pest-proof fence surrounding the valley, capable of blocking predators, from mice to deer.

From Germany to the Sanctuary of Nelson

Julia Teufel
The Brook Sanctuary intern Julia Teufel at work in the new Campaign Office at Bowater Honda on Rutherford Street whilst the A-Team from The Signman apply new images to Hudson's office space.


Julia has swapped her northern hemisphere spring for a taste of Nelson in the autumn, but couldn't be happier.
She has travelled here to be the new Brook Sanctuary intern, and 3 weeks into it she has already found her feet and integrated into the hard working core Brook Sanctuary team.

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