Our Carbon Offset Programme aims to keep New Zealand Beautiful

But recently we made the decision to get our hands dirty …

Because of the potential impact of climate change to our planet and New Zealand, a healthy natural environment is more important than ever. For us, we recognise that our core business relies on the transportation of guests throughout our beautiful country and therefore there is a carbon cost to the environment.

So after much brainstorming, we have embraced carbon offsetting and its reduction across all of our tourism businesses. A carbon offset broadly refers to a reduction in GHG emissions – or an increase in carbon storage (through the planting of trees) – that is used to compensate for emissions that occur with our travel businesses

Simply put, we are PLANTING TREES and now actually turning soil - It's hot and back-breaking work, but here we are…

Walking the Walk

Although head office is based in Auckland, we also have staff working from our offices in Arrowtown and Queenstown. Working within our local Arrowtown community - we found a group of people who were keen to get involved and were committed to a long-term vision to make a significant improvement on the local environment. That group of people are called The Arrowtown Choppers.

Arrowtown Choppers

The Arrowtown Choppers are a volunteer group dedicated to the eradication of the wilding conifers and native revegetation work around Arrowtown. (hence the name chopper - they chop down the non-native wildling pines)

To date, volunteers (including staff from First Light Travel and our sister company New Zealand Trails) have cleared over 100 hectares (247 Acres) of wilding trees and re-planted over 20,000 native trees, including Beech, Totara, Ribbonwood and Kowhai.

The long-term goal of the Arrowtown Choppers is to see natural forest regeneration behind Arrowtown. This includes the introduction of key missing native forest species that were once present. This in turn will help increase the habitat for a range of native birds, lizards, and insects, enriching our biodiversity.

The hills behind Arrowtown have some of the highest densities of falcon in the country due to our mosaic of shrubland, tussock grassland, and beech forest. Small bird species like miromiro/tomtits, piwakawaka/fantails, and korimako/bellbirds help provide a food source for karearea/falcon parents and chicks. In combination with Predator Free Arrowtown, we hope to eventually establish enough forest so that other birds like kea, kaka, and robin can eventually be reintroduced to the area.

Positive Benefits in Action

This reforestation project will have many benefits, including:

• long-term carbon sequestration and allowing our tourism businesses to truly be carbon neutral
• opportunities for applied research and teaching
• extension of the Arrowtown Outer Green Belt
• public access to forested areas and walking tracks
• establishing working relationships between DOC, the Council, and the public
• opportunities for staff and clients to engage in volunteer activities

A Lifetime collaboration

The 'Arrowtown Choppers' is a collaborative project supported by the Arrowtown local community and local businesses including First Light Travel and New Zealand Trails. The project is a significant part of our strategy as a tourism business to become carbon neutral by 2027. As the forest develops, the carbon captured in the trees and soil will help offset our carbon dioxide emissions. The current plan is to plant and nurture over 100,000 seedlings for the foreseeable future. Volunteers will plant around 5000 trees per year. This collaboration represents a novel approach to reforestation and education, where the indigenous biodiversity of the land will be restored while providing a range of benefits to the community.

Join us on the journey of reducing our environmental footprint.

First Light Travel and our sister company New Zealand Trails acknowledge that we need to reduce our environmental footprint. Our carbon measurement and offset program to date has allowed us to plant over 3000 native beach trees.

Beech trees (Nothofagus species) can sequester a significant amount of carbon over their lifetimes. A mature tree can store about 22 kg of CO2 per year on average. Over 300 years, a single tree could sequester approximately:

22 kg/year×300 years=6600 kg CO222 \text{ kg/year} \times 300 \text{ years} = 6600 \text{ kg} \text{ CO2}22 kg/year×300 years=6600 kg CO2

Given 3,000 trees, the total carbon offset would be:

6600 kg/tree×3000 trees=19,800,000 kg CO26600 \text{ kg/tree} \times 3000 \text{ trees} = 19,800,000 \text{ kg} \text{ CO2}6600 kg/tree×3000 trees=19,800,000 kg CO2

Converting this to metric tons (since 1 metric ton = 1,000 kg):

19,800,000 kg÷1000=19,800 metric tons19,800,000 \text{ kg} \div 1000 = 19,800 \text{ metric tons}19,800,000 kg÷1000=19,800 metric tons

So, 3,000 New Zealand beech trees, that grow to 30 meters tall and reach the ripe old age of 300 years, could offset approximately 19,800 metric tons of CO2.

You can opt-in and help for as little as $NZ5pp (US$3) - or not, it's ok, we are going to do it anyway. This year we donated $NZ10.000 (that's 3,333 trees) and volunteered a lot of labor - and we intend to do better next and every other year.