Hinewai Reserve

This is Hinewai Reserve, a private nature reserve on Banks Peninsula, in the Canterbury Region of New Zealand. The Maurice White Native Forest Trust owns and manages it.

The reserve started as 109 hectares of farmland, bought in September 1987. It’s grown quite a bit since then, to about 1,426 hectares, and now it has a mix of gorse and native bush that's growing back. Before people settled here, this land was all forest, but most of the native plants were cleared after European colonization. Now, it's reforesting quickly, with the gorse actually helping the native species to regenerate.

You’ll find over 20 public walking tracks here, including parts of the Banks Peninsula Track. Botanist Hugh Wilson manages the reserve for the Trust and even hand-writes and illustrates a quarterly newsletter called Pīpipi, which talks about the reserve's progress and ecology.

In July 2011, about a third of the reserve burned in a big fire, probably from a lightning strike. But by 2017, the native plants had grown back fast, with gorse acting as a pioneer species. Then, in December 2021, floods caused a lot of landslips across the reserve, changing parts of the landscape. They reported more recovery and growth of gorse and native shrubs in 2024 and 2025.