A mighty kauri has fallen.

The Coromandel farewelled Kauri 2000 founder Cliff Heraud this week at a special ceremony in Kuaotunu.

The Kuaotunu community have says farewell to the founder of Kauri 2000, the late Cliff Heraud. Photo: stuff.co.nz

Cliff died after a short illness last week and has been remembered as one of the Coromandel's champions of conservation. He was 92-years-old.

In 1999 Cliff set the goal of planting 2000 trees to greet the new millennium and to replenish the peninsulas kauri population destroyed by the saw milling industry.

Sixteen years later his vision has resulted in the planting of over 45,000 kauri trees throughout the Coromandel Peninsula from below Waihi to Waikawau Bay and from Kauri Point to Cathedral Cove on the east coast.

Cliff was born on August 30, 1923, Palmerston North, grew up in Eastbourne, Wellington, where he went to Wellington College.

During World War II he was conscripted initially into the New Zealand Army then went to Devonport in England where he did an officers course. He served as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy, on a minesweeper, in the Mediterranean for 18 months until the war ended.

On his return back home, Cliff trained as an accountant, worked for ICI and had several business interests before he left city life in 1957 to become a farmer. He worked on two farms in the Central Plateau before purchasing a farm in Waimiha in the King Country through the World War 2 rehabilitation scheme.

In 1952, he married Julie Hutchison of Petone, Wellington.

In 1983, at the age of 60, Cliff retired from farming and bought their property in Kuaotunu.

His son Richard says his father understood that all work depended on the quality of the social relations of those he collaborated with.

'I think he will be remembered as somebody who, along with Vivienne McLean, established the building blocks for the ongoing development of Kauri 2000,” he says. 'Furthermore, I think he should be recognised for advocating for the development of the educational aspect of this project,” says Richard.

'Ultimately my father thought in the long term. He was someone who saw the majesty of the kauri.”

In 2004 on August 13, Cliff was awarded the Queen's Service Medal for Community Service by Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright.

- stuff.co.nz