A flood of new plantings
Nearly a million trees planted despite weather
Extreme weather events have hampered Waikato River protection works over the past year but landowners and WRC have still managed to plough ahead with environmental protection work, including planting almost one million trees, including over 80,000 in the Coromandel.
Waikato Regional Council (WRC) worked with 341 landowners in 2022/23 to retire 1726 hectares of land, plant 950,000 native trees and protect 137 kilometres of waterways.
A report on the council’s river and catchment planning and management activities for the year was presented to the Integrated Catchment Management Committee on September 21.
Work completed in the Coromandel:
12240 metres of new fencing 9198m of streambank protected 81,564 native plants planted 430.3m of area retired Waikato and West Coast catchments manager Grant Blackie told the committee that while the report gave some basic statistics, it was important to acknowledge the rich picture of community partnerships the numbers represent.
“If you think about the individuals and the iwi groups and everyone we have worked with in the past year then the story is a lot richer than just a table of numbers, although it is still an impressive table of numbers,” said Mr Blackie.
In his report, Blackie said the Coromandel River and Catchments team had to switch from planned river work to inspecting and assessing damage, followed by remediation work including erosion control and protection, obstruction and vegetation removal and channel capacity reinstatement.
He said a request would be made to transfer funds from disaster reserves to fund the remedial work. It would take at least three years to fix the damage.
The council has divided the region into eight catchment management zones: Central Waikato, Coromandel, Lake Taupo¯ , Upper Waikato, Waihou/ Piako, Waipa¯ and West Coast. The story was similar for most of the eight zones in the Waikato region.
Mr Blackie said one highlight for 2022/23 was the confirmation of the continuation of funding from the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Hill Country Erosion Fund for the next four years, from 2023 to 2027.
“We’ve successfully obtained another $2.86 million to make it cheaper for landowners to do mitigation work targeting hill country erosion.”
The council’s Integrated Catchment Management directorate manages catchments in partnership with landowners to reduce soil erosion, flooding and the amount of sediment getting into waterways, and to improve water quality, river stability and river environments.
Integrated Catchment Management Committee chair Robbie Cookson said the amount of work that landowners were doing to improve water quality in the region’s catchments was phenomenal, and there were many who also fund this type of work alone or with funding from sources other than the council.
One way it does this is to help fund the costs of riparian and hill country fencing and planting.
This voluntary catchment and river restoration work is funded in different ways throughout the region, with funding coming from rates collected and/or by the council applying for funding for various work programmes from other organisations such as Waikato River Authority, the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry for Primary Industries, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Waikato Catchment Ecological Enhancement Trust.
The amount of funding available to landowners depends on whether landowners are in an identified priority catchment or whether the council has secured additional funding for work programmes. It ranges from 35 per cent of costs to 80 per cent, depending on the type of work and funding available.