SIX years ago, Shannon Te Huia created Pūniu River Care (PRC) aimed at restoring the water quality of the river after years of degradation.
Earlier this month, his work around the iwi-led project was nationally recognised when he was named the 2021 Kiwibank Local Hero of the Year at the New Zealander of the Year awards.
Not only did it leave him speechless, it thrusted PRC into the national spotlight.
“We always had a good profile locally, but this has increased our profile in Aotearoa, which may have its challenges because our views and the way we perceive the world is quite local with our views and relationships,” Te Huia said.
For Te Huia, establishing PRC was about spending time on a project that had a lot of meaning for him and working on something he cared deeply about.
A trained civil engineer, Te Huia grew up in the district and says he had some of the best moments of his life while out in nature.
“We formed PRC because it was something practical that you could do. It was something that when you look at as a community, what can you do to make things better,” he said.
“We wanted to restore the river and planting trees is a big part of that.”
He says Māori believe that the river is a living entity.
“We are one with the river so there’s a relationship between the health of the river and the health of us as people, and having that connection with the river, where you can just be with the river, brings us back to who we really are, he said.
“For us, it’s important that we do what we can to take care of her and that’s where Kaitiakitanga comes in.”
As long as Te Huia remembered, the river was in a poor state, which had turned the water into a colour resembling Coca-Cola.
A study undertaken several years ago estimated that around 10,000 tonnes of sediment were falling into the Pūniu River.
“You smell like the river when you come out of it,” he said.
It took him about a year of planning and held meetings with the four marae which fell within the river’s catchment and presented the plan to them.
His idea was simple: to grow and plant native trees around the Pūniu River catchment to restore its ecosystem, as well as providing a source of employment for his people.
It won their collective backing and he then presented the plan to the Collaborative Stakeholders Group, which had formed at the time to help create the Waikato Regional Council’s Plan Change 1.
He also worked with his friend, sheep and beef farmer James Bailey, who sat on the group as its sheep and beef farmer representative.
He developed a draft five-year strategy that was presented to the marae, which was supported, giving him the mandate to go ahead.
That strategy involves engaging with landowners, fences off waterways, planting and maintaining trees, engaging with planning and employing people to undertake the work.
Since its creation in 2015, PRC has grown to employ 50 people and has planted about one million trees along the banks of the 64km river, which winds through South Waikato, running east of Te Awamutu before connecting to the Waipa River.
He has also established a nursery on a lease block adjacent to Mangatoatoa Marae, south of Te Awamutu to grow the plants used for planting projects and wetland development on the riverbank.
So far, Te Huia estimates they have planted at least a million trees along about 36km of riverbank within the catchment.
“We have the infrastructure set to build that. We have a very large nursery that can grow 1.5 million trees a year,” he said.
“We’re constantly trying to improve the quality of the trees we grow, improve our succession rate and being more specific around identifying these critical source areas on farms as opposed to just planting.”
PRC was established as an incorporated society and charity and receives funding from local and central government and the Waikato River Authority.
Local farmers were supportive of PRC’s aims, and he credits this with it being such a small local community where everybody knew each other.
“A lot of our farmers are generational; we went to primary school together, college together and we played in a footy team. That’s the beauty of community-led stuff,” he said.
“Everyone has a genuine desire to improve their farming systems and they value the waterways, the birdlife and the beautiful things about nature.”
The river no longer smells, which he put down to changing farming practices where effluent and nutrients no longer directly enter waterways.
The plantings along the river had provided shade and prevented erosion and there are no longer gouges where the bank has fallen into the water.
This winter and spring, the nursery has 500,000 trees ready to be planted for various projects within the catchment.
Despite the progress, Te Huia says they have only scratched the surface for planting out the catchment and the work will have to be multigenerational to succeed.
“We’re not going to see the end of this in our lifetime. This is a programme that needs to be built into the way we use our land – using, harvesting, farming, whatever – this needs to be a programme that’s built into that,” he said.
Looking ahead, he wants PRC to expand to tackle some of the wider social issues affecting the Te Awamutu community, particularly around housing availability.
He says he hopes the 50 people he employs to have home ownership and for families to be settled. Te Huia says he hopes to start making progress on that in the next three to five years.
“We’re keen to take a bite out of that, but having our kaupapa and vision for the Pūniu and ultimately being the thing that keeps everything together,” he said.
