A comeback for grazing animals?

A grazing licence could be back up for grabs for 208 hectares of land in Queen Elizabeth Park on the Kā piti Coast, an area previously put aside for peatland restoration.

Stock has been absent from the park for 18 months, and good options for restoring the park were underway in other areas. But a delay before further restoration work can get underway leaves the land in danger of becoming overgrown and a fire risk.

The Greater Wellington Regional Council announced in December 2020 it would be returning 1350ha of its 2000ha of grazed park land to native habitat over the next 10 years as part of its Toitū Te Whenua Parks Network Plan. The council’s general manager of environment management, Al Cross, said the option of returning farm animals on the land was a possible interim solution.

If the council chose to go with this option , still a way off yet, Cross said – a grazing licence covering approximately 208 ha would be valid for three years.

Restoration work was going well at the northern end of the park. In August, 28ha of native seedlings were planted on 128.5ha of previously grazed land in one week.

Cross acknowledged it appeared out of step with the intentions of Toitū Te Whenua Parks Network Plan 2020-30, and the council’s goal to reach carbon net-zero by 2030. ‘‘In terms of our corporate carbon emissions, grazing in regional parks provides for around a quarter of those emissions.’’

The key was the difference between farming and grazing. A farming licence allowed pasture-improving actions to be carried out – pesticides and nutrients – which had detrimental effects on waterways.

A fire ripped through the park’s overgrown dunes during summer last year, apparently started by an overheating mower muffler, operating at a hot time of day.

Friends of Queen Elizabeth Park were recently granted $100,000 from the Wellington Community Trust to carry out restoration work in the park. That would have included ‘‘re-wetting’’ the peatland – an area of peat soil with wetland on its surface alongside the Peka Peka expressway – which was easily done by blocking the field drains originally installed to make the land suitable for grazing, reducing fire risk.

But chair Russell Bell said the council needed to do more research, and acquire plants and workers, before that could proceed. All the work would be reversible. The drains were large plastic pipes, and the plan was to cap their ends. They could plant the dunes with the leftover grant money.

For every hectare of peat drained, 29 tonnes of carbon would be released. It would take a hectare of newly planted trees 12 years to reabsorb it.

Blocking off the peatlands and grazing the dunes would be ‘‘an excellent compromise’’, Bell said.