Written by Verity Coker

Rotorua Canopy Tours is a native forest zipline experience with a difference. Every customer who goes on a Canopy Tour helps to restore the native forest that has been damaged by humans and introduced pests, it truly is tourism with a difference! A portion of every tour purchased is donated to their conservation efforts. With these funds, the team have been able to restore a large section of the Dansey Road Scenic Reserve by trapping for invasive pests, such as rats and possums that prey on native species including birds and insects, the pests also graze on the native forest itself.

Spencer showing Trenz delegates how to set a possum trap. 

For the past six years, Canopy Tours have been trapping in the Dansey Road Scenic Reserve. They have trapped over 250 hectares of forest and have seen amazing results. Hundreds of pests have been removed from this area and native bird numbers have risen, the North Island Robin can even be seen eating out of visitor’s hands on tour.

Treetop canopy tours took nearly 5 years from the spark of inspiration until the first customers came on one of our treetop canopy tours with us. Since then over 128,000 guests have enjoyed the magic of this native New Zealand forest.

So if you’re interested – here’s the story of how our zipline tours all began...

Conservation at Rotorua Canopy Tours has been a part of our journey since the beginning back in 2012. We are hugely passionate about our environment and we are working hard to get New Zealand pest free by 2050. We have started this work at Dansey Road Scenic Reserve where our ziplining courses are located. We have seen major differences in the forest already due to our work, but we know there is still so much to do - if you haven't heard how Rotorua Canopy Tours began and how this conservation idea was sparked have a read here!