"I made the call straight up to lock up 15 per cent of the entire farm under QEII covenant."
A number of the steeper gorges had already been fenced off but another 161ha was protected under a series of QEII covenants, bringing the total of fenced off natural areas to some 300ha - about a third of the farm.
Some 50km of seven-wire post and batten fences were put up over a five-year period, with Trelinnoe paying a third of the cost, the Hawke's Bay Regional Council a third and the QEII Trust the final third.
"It works a bit differently around the country, depending what regional council you're under, but that cost sharing is a reasonably common method used," says Bruce, who for the last three years has been the Minister of Conservation's appointment on the QEII National Trust board, to represent farmer interests.
He's up for reappointment, and he's such an enthusiastic and practical advocate of the covenant process, Maggie Barry would be mad not to leave him in the role.
Bruce says there are so many trees on Trelinnoe he's out with a chainsaw more often than a team of dogs.
It was all kicked off by his father, a mad-keen botanist and gardener. At the heart of the property is a 13ha park based on an English landscape design and featuring up to 20,000 trees and shrubs from around the world. Internationally recognised and open to the public seven days a week, some 140,000 visitors have wandered the environs and six lakes.
"We mow 10 acres of lawn a week, and there are 2km of hedges to clip."
Another 15,000 poplars, willows and other trees dot the 800ha still in grazing.
Bruce says there have been pluses for the farming operation from covenanting large parcels of steeper land and gorges.
Years back he and his brother Scott, the stock manager, would wait on the spur of a ridge for 20 minutes while a team of predominantly huntaway dogs would flush out stock from the bush.
Now they only need heading dogs because all mustering is within fencelines.
"It's made running the farm much easier. This was land that was difficult to farm. When it was all open we used to lose stock over bluffs and cliffs.
"Even though we'd locked out a third of the land the total stock units we're running only came down a fraction."
But the most significant thing was "it was the right thing to do".
"Looking after the environment needs to be part and parcel of farming these days."
Without sheep and cattle pushing at the bush fringes, there has been vigorous growth of kanuka, manuka and broad-leaf natives. Waterways at the bottom of gullies run clear.
Best of all are the birds - "clouds of them," Bruce says.
"As soon as the areas were fenced off we saw a really exciting rebound in plant and bird life. They took off, and the more we did with QEII, the more we could see the difference and it was the driver to push on."
A downside is that pest and weed control takes time and money, and fences have to be maintained when there is damage from slips and storms.
"A weird irony is that when farmers do the right thing by protecting bush, wetlands and with riparian planting, they're creating extra habitat for both the good and the bad."
Trelinnoe has 300 bait stations, and there are always possums, goats, deer, stoats and rabbits to cull.
"But I can say without a doubt, the positives outweigh the negatives," Bruce says.
When a regional council gets a new crop of councillors or an impetus to do more in the environment space, wait lists for QEII Trust covenants can develop - as has happened in Taranaki.
Bruce says that's his biggest frustration.
"When we have farmers who care, who want to get on with protection work, the last thing we need is for the QEII Trust not to have the resources to keep up.
Fortunately, it doesn't happen too often." Bruce is looking forward to the next 40 years of the Trust's operation, "and hopefully a doubling or more of the area under covenant".
