This completed programme started in 2007 covering coastline public road reserves and 3 small watersheds on private land that drain into Kanuka Bay, which is the shallow embayment just east of Tapu Point/Deeming Road on the Okiato peninsula.
Challenges:
Manageable challenges included extending and maintaining the pest control network in the face of new invasions of possums, rats and stoats from the Russell peninsula; removing seedlings of invasive alien plants such as monkey-apple and wild ginger which are reintroduced by birds; persuading neighbours to keep domestic predators (aka pets) under control and to remove plant pest seedheads/fruit early.Whilst ongoing challenges included large pulses of sediment, nutrients, floating rubbish and mats of alligator weed discharged into the Bay by floods in the Kawakawa River, directly opposite.
Achievements:
• Initially invasive weeds and animal pests from the regenerating forests of the lower valleys and the 20-40m wide unformed road reserve adjoining the bay were removed. This was followed by revegetation of the cleared areas with native plant communities appropriate to the habitat type involved.
• A flood detention pond was re-established to trap sediment from upslope, and a floodplain training wall was installed to minimise erosion.
• A new kahikatea grove topping 7 metres;
• The Pohutukawa glade flowering over all plantings
• Salt meadow and saltmarsh replacing the dense ginger, alligator weed and kikuyu
• Small beds of zostera seagrass establishing in the intertidal; banded rail breeding in the wetland
• Bittern and fernbird visiting the wetland to feed
• Reduced sedimentation from the adjoining lands.
Funding:
None of our achievements would have been possible without our sponsors.
The initial work was funded by landowners, Northland Regional Council’s Environment Fund and Far North District Council’s community fund to implement an agreed restoration plan.
Russell Landcare Trust provided bait-stations and traps for pest control, together with experienced planters to assist with revegetating the public land. Subsequently, 4 kiwi nest boxes were provided to help with recovering the local kiwi population, which held its own with the new and increasing weka population.