Aims & Achievements

Community Involvement
The more members of the community that support this project, the more successful it is becoming.

• Pest Control Day - In November 2019 we held a very successful community field day with the support of DOC and Living Water. This generated a large buy in from the local community on getting rid of possums and rats and helped us to communicate a predator free ‘Forest to Firth’ concept. It also allowed us to gather contact details for many people in our locality so that we could inform them about future events. This has led to subsequent meetings where we have been able to inform local people about all aspects of our work including tree planting, stream quality monitoring, pest control and funding opportunities.

Planting for water quality and biodiversity
Planting stabilizes banks, cools the water, and creates habitat for native birds and invertebrates.

• Pūkorokoro Miranda - various plantings including along multiple streams, including plantings for the Western stream which is now 100% completed.

• Kaiaua Stream - planted behind fire station, and in other vunerable spots.

• Waitakaruru Stream - community plantings held during Winter 2020.

Pest Control
As planting creates habitat for possums and rats, we've been coordinating on a plan to control them.

• Predator control - Implemented a large-scale predator control operation on private land and native forest blocks within the catchment.

Preventing silt run-off
We've planted for bank stabilisation and created silt traps.

• Bank stabilization planting - identified vulnerable banks are being stabilized through the planting of the fast-growing Poplar trees.

• Silt traps installed - created silt detention bunds in stream channels flowing into the Firth. These have been very successful for improving stream clarity. Culverts have also been installed and have been modified to allow for the passage of native fish.

Stream monitoring
We've been establishing a baseline to compare to.

• Biannual survey - to establish a baseline, we developed a biannual survey examining water quality and macroinvertebrate presence in three streams in conjunction with EcoQuest Education Foundation, a tertiary environmental education provider.

• Pūkorokoro streams - we are testing three streams of varying riparian conditions which we hope will show differences over time in relation to the management of these streams and the quality of their water.

• Collated results - Data from initial testing has now been collated.

• Scaleable - the methodology for this testing is being piloted in the Pūkorokoro catchment, with the aim to then be able to easily scale it up to apply it to other catchments.

Partners & supporters
We are grateful for our supporters!

We have gratefully received support from the below organisations. Living Water has helped provide an initial boost with a combination of theoretical science and modeling for landowners apply on the ground and initial funding. Current partners and supporters include:

• Living Water

• EcoQuest Education Foundation

• Pūkorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre

• Department of Conservation

• Waikato Regional Council

• Ravensdown (via Living Water)

Funding

In addition to support from Living Water, we have also been lucky to receive some funding from the DoC Community Fund, and other sources.