Medicinal plantings and carbon credits all part of new Heaphy Hills subdivision
Heaphy Hills overlooks Mt Olympus (right) and the Lead Hills (left). Photo: Supplied.
Up towards the start of the Heaphy Track, over the two road fords of both 15 Mile and 17 Mile Creeks, the Aorere Valley Road narrows and the totara remnants in the paddocks indicate that you’ve passed from dairy land to dry stock.
Mostly this is big block country, but there are a few 10-acre (4 hectare) blocks around here, occupied on either a temporary or permanent basis. Now there’s going to be six more. Just a couple of kilometres before the start of the Heaphy Track, a new wooden sign announces “Heaphy Hills” at the bottom of a newly engineered road that runs off to the right. It’s taken Sollys Contractors nearly six weeks to cut it through the tall kanuka and totara, climbing to a plateau that provides 360-degree vistas over the valley and surrounding mountains, including Lead Hills and Mt Olympus.
Carbon Trust Ltd, the company developing the property, is pitching the sale of these new titles to companies and individuals wanting to offset their carbon production. Native forest, which covers most of the titles, can only be claimed to be sequestering a flat three tonnes per hectare per year under the existing Emissions Trading Scheme (currently under review, which may well see a more flexible claiming scenario result). The four-hectare title with the most flat, clear land has already been taken up by Forest Herbs Research, which has started planting out rows of its rare RedLeaf™ horopito (Pseudowintera colorata) that it has been propagating in pots over several years. Although horopito is well known for its traditional medicinal properties by Maori healers, it wasn’t until the 1980s that the active ingredient in the plant was isolated: a powerful antifungal agent called polygodial.
Forest Herbs Research Ltd was started by Carbon Trust director Peter Butler, formerly of Kaituna but now living in Nelson. In the late 1980s, he followed up on research at the University of California that confirmed polygodial’s effectiveness against Candida albicans. This disease commonly manifests as oral or vaginal thrush, but is often implicated in athlete’s foot, nail infections, jock and anal itches as well as body rashes. It has the potential to become a serious health risk when an outgrowth occurs in the intestine - a common side effect of taking broad spectrum antibiotics. Studies in the United States have shown that up to one in three Americans suffer health problems due to Candida.
Peter commissioned labs at the Cawthron Institute and the CRI Industrial Research Ltd to carry out research that ultimately resulted in Forest Herbs being granted patent around both the use of horopito and its extraction. Toxicity and efficacy trials were part of the development of a small suite of products, branded Kolorex, based on the most active of the horopito, called RedLeaf (now trademarked by Peter) for the beautiful coloring of its leaves. Forest Herbs launched their Kolorex anti-Candida capsules and creams on the market here in 1992 and they are now distributed in countries as diverse as Israel and Kazakhstan.
“We’re not great marketers,” says Peter, “which is probably just as well because our horopito trees are very slow growing – it takes about eight years before they can be usefully and sustainably harvested.”
Peter is confident his latest plantation planting of horopito in the upper Aorere Valley will be successful. “I don’t think it necessarily rains so much more often up there, it just seems to rain heavier when it does, which is ideal for RedLeaf horopito, which hates to dry out.”
Interestingly, James Mackay from First National Real Estate, who is marketing the other five four-hectare blocks unsuitable for commercial horopito production, says most of the interest shown so far has come from alternative lifestylers who haven’t been daunted by, for a start, being off the mains power grid.
“Hydro and wind generation of power is used by existing residents at the top of the Aorere Valley,” says James. “I will certainly expect more interest from recreational types if DOC allows seasonal biking on the Heaphy, which seems likely.”
Gerard Hindmarsh
