School, neighbours care for gully
A local school and a neighbourhood is adding up to a recipe for environmental success for Taupo¯’s Waipa¯hı¯hı¯ Gully.
The gully, which runs behind Grace Cres from the Waipa¯hı¯hı¯ Sports Ground to Lake Tce, has been the subject of some intense love from local resident Pat Gibbs, who started clearing weeds like blackberry and broom and replanting a small section of the gully with native trees about five years ago.
Her husband John soon joined in by trapping pests and their efforts have now inspired a plan to make the whole gully to make a safe haven for native birds as well as enhancing the area for walkers and cyclists.
Now Waipa¯hı¯hı¯ School students have joined the effort, with their weekly Bush School group from the youngest to the oldest students making the pilgrimage to the gully to help realise the Gibbs’ vision of restoring the gully’s biodiversity.
The children willingly join in the weed clearing, attacking the pest plants with gusto and making a real difference to the progress of the project.
“They’ve cleared this bank here and planted it,” says Pat of a newly-planted bank. “They absolutely love it. They are tremendous conservationists so we definitely want to encourage that but they’ve done such a great job here and just loved every minute of it and they would keep going all day if I had enough trees for them to plant . . . they’ve just done so much. It’s great.”
As well as clearing and planting, the children help John check and reset the pest traps, last week proudly announcing they had caught four mice and “a big rat”.
Pat says the collaboration with the school began after children came to the gully on a school trip and saw the restoration work that had been done.
“Someone contacted us and said the school would like to get involved and we welcomed them with open arms.”
As well as weed clearing and planting, the children have also done a rubbish cleanup in the gully with the support of Tidy Taupo¯’s Carol Lamb, collecting 18kg in one outing alone, including six bags of dog droppings.
In their free time, they also get a lot of pleasure from activities such as sliding down the banks on their bottoms, building huts and generally having outdoor fun.
“The parents must wonder why they come home absolutely filthy.”
John says the couple realised after beavering away on their own for some months that if they could get other groups involved, it would make for a more holistic restoration.
So they talked to the Taupo¯ District Council and successfully applied to the Waikato Regional Council’s Small Scale Community Initiatives fund for money for traps, to undertake pest control and worked closely with Greening Taupo¯.
“The really neat thing about that is that the school has been coming over here and having their bush school for quite a while and it’s given them a bit of a purpose and a bit of a goal of doing something for the area that they enjoy.
“The teachers have really come on board, they’re enthusiastic and our hope is that it will build interest in the community as well from the kids to the families.
“Having the kids involved it’s a completely different dimension. The sort of stuff that we’re doing gives us satisfaction and achieves the vision that we have got but to get kids involved and to see their enthusiasm for it is really neat.
“It will be nice to think that one day it will have a life of its own and the school will just continue it as part of their regular activities and curriculum.”
Students Matthew Tunnicliffe and William Gilmer, both nine, had just returned from checking traps with John and said they enjoyed coming to the gully.
“We come down here for a bit of fun and planting because it used to be all just blackberries but we’re chopping down the blackberries and clearing it and we’re planting more plants,” Matthew said.
William said he normally come to the gully to clean out plastic, dig holes for native plants and check traps with John.
“Me and John had fun trapping,” he said.
Kaegan Palmer, 10, said he was at the gully for environmental reasons.
“We get to help out the environment by clearing all the unnatural substances and plastic and plants that aren’t supposed to be here and we’re having lots of fun doing it at the same time.”