From a distance the volunteers look like an army of cartoon minions. Yellow hi-vis vests dotted over a gully hillside at South Head Kaipara.
By the end of the day 3000 plants – kānuka, karamu, kohekohe, pūriri, and karaka – will be in the ground at Ross and Eleanor Webber’s beef farm, part of a real effort over 20 years to fence off waterways and plant natives.
They’re up to 50ha on their 200ha farm and this weekend’s spot is behind a deer fence to keep the feral pest out.
Despite his work to stop sediment runoff into Kaipara Harbour over 20 years, time is a strange thing.
Ross Webber says in the 1970s he was ripping trees out.
“Well, I’ve been an environmental destruction person myself, you know,” he told 1News.
“I think there was a scheme that the government put forward which was very destructive, was the land development encouragement loan … allowed farmers to clear all their land if they could increase the stock numbers … their loan was written off and a lot of the farmers out in South Head went for it, as you would.
“The impact that that had on the ecology of South Head back in the ’70s was devastating.”
The 68-year-old remembers being able to row from the gully down a little stream to the roadside, a distance of 500 metres.
That’s no longer possible.
“I could get a canoe there, right to the edge and now the sedimentation stopped a lot of that.”
The farm is part of the $200 million Kaipara Moana Remediation project – partly funded by the Government – which is working to arrest ecological decline for a harbour that’s a significant breeding ground for snapper.
The massive 600,000ha catchment stretches from Helena Bay on Northland’s east coast moving west across to Waipoua Forest and south almost to Manukau Harbour.
Kaipara moana is a victim of everything that water movement brings it, sedimentation a master contaminant made up of E. coli, heavy metals, nitrates, and phosphorous. It’s estimated 700,000 tonnes of it enters the harbour each year.
That’s why planting to arrest water movement in shifting soils is so important, Kaipara Moana Remediation Pou Tātaki Justine Daw believes.
“What people don’t realise is there’s over 8000km of rivers and streams, tributaries that then flow into this waterway, so into the harbour.
“We have a long-term objective to halve the sediment flows; probably will take more than 10 years to get us there.”
