Connecting NZ Communities with their Land

In 2018 we partnered with WAI Wānaka to lead and commence riparian planting for the Wānaka Water project which is funded under the Ministry for the Environment's Freshwater Improvement Fund (FIF). 

Our involvement means we will be planting 24,000 plants over the five year life of this project and we are running this alongside our community plantings which remain our core focus.

We continue to use plants eco-sourced from within this region to ensure everything we do supports the traditional biodiversity of the region. Local nurseries, Matukituki Natives and Pukerau are providing plants where we cannot meet the demand.

We have developed site selection criteria to determine the suitability of potential locations against the prime objective of water quality improvement, and an MOU between parties for selected sites. Such sites include those administered by our traditional partners QLDC and DOC, as well as some stream sides and wetlands on private land that feed into the rivers or lakes. Aspiring Environmental, have been developing Land Environment Plans with farmers around the lakes and are helping identify potential sites, and QLDC is helping identify areas for mitigating urban runoff impacts.

Te Kākano staff and volunteers are propagating plants of suitable species, and organising the planting and initial maintenance of these.  This work will be ongoing and where the numbers are beyond the Trust’s scope we will contract out plantings. Where a site is on private land, we will most likely use contractors to do the planting.

We believe that delivering the Wānaka Water Project helps us further enhance our ability to improve the biodiversity of the area through connecting people with the land.