Last year DoC found its efforts to control possums were no longer having any effect.
At the same time rats and stoats are killing kiwi and kauri snails and taking chicks from their nests. Rats also eat seeds on the forest floor, preventing regeneration.
The scale of the problem, and DoC's ever-shrinking budget, has forced a new and more collaborative approach.
The result is a plan bringing together iwi, the Northland Regional Council, DoC, community groups, land-owners and ten local marae under the banner of the Warawara Komiti Kaitiaki [Warawara Guardians Committee], first set up in 2011. Conservationists hope will be a game-changer when it comes to pest control.
The committee had already agreed to a five-year programme, covering the 6800ha of the 13,300ha forest which is in private hands, in which the regional council provides all the traps and baits needed for the first three years, then half in years 4 and 5.
That still left the committee to raise the money needed to pay four full-time trappers to lay and set the traps.
It had already received funding from the environmental group Reconnecting Northland, but last week's announcement of a $287,000 grant from DoC's new Community Conservation Partnerships Fund means work can now begin in earnest.
Trapping and bait-laying is expected to start early next year.
Te Runanga o Te Rarawa chairman Haami Piripi said the fact that local landowners and the 10 marae surrounding the forest were all working together on such a large project was a breakthrough in itself.
The role of the iwi was to give hapu the support they needed to fulfil their role of kaitiakitanga (guardianship).
Te Rarawa environmental coordinator Rongo Bentson said hapu once depended on the forest for almost everything they needed, including clothing, food and shelter.
"But now Warawara needs our help to survive," he said.
Possums were only thought to have arrived in Warawara in the 1980s but their impact had been devastating. DoC's efforts to control pests on conservation land were failing because as soon as they were removed from one part of the forest they would re-invade from adjacent private land.
The Community Pest Control Area project was only part of the committee's plans. Other initiatives included a kiwi sanctuary, kiwi aversion training for dogs, training locals to carry out bird monitoring, and kiwi awareness days at local schools, Mr Bentson said.
Dame Whina Cooper called the forest Te Wairua o te Iwi o Te Rarawa [the living spirit of Te Rarawa].
Six Far North groups were granted funding in the first round of the Community Conservation Partnerships Fund. Fish Forever received $25,197 to help set up marine reserves in the Bay of Islands; Guardians of the Bay of Islands received $80,400 for a community-driven mainland island restoration project; Puketi Forest Trust received $111,500 for predator control and to complete the reintroduction of kokako; Ngati Rehia received $78,261 to restore areas of ecological and historical heritage; the Bushlands Trust received $39,739 to tackle weeds around Lake Ngatu; and Te Runanga o Te Rarawa received $287,408 to cover the costs of trappers and halt the decline of Warawara Forest.
