Friday, March 29, 2024

Farmers, iwi, community unite to help Kaipara Harbour

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Under fire from Greenpeace, dairy farmers throughout New Zealand are keen to share their environmental initiatives. Pastoral farming surrounds the giant Kaipara Harbour, where the water quality improvement plans are far-reaching and community efforts are under way. Hugh Stringleman reports.
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THE peninsula community of Tapora on the Kaipara Harbour north of Auckland has resolved to do land rehabilitation that will restore an “international airport for coastal birds”.

An enthusiastic mix of landowners, farmers, horticulturists, lifestylers and ecological experts with help from Ngati Whatua, Auckland City Council, the dairy industry and local businesses wants to tackle a 300ha-plus foreshore reserve, presently wasteland.

They want to enhance the adjacent Manukapua (Cloud of Birds) 350ha sand island, already a wildlife reserve, and a very special location for Maori.

The foreshore, called Okahukura Conservation Area, owned by the Conservation Department, was devastated by fire in 2013, which took out most trees.

Now covered by toitoi and gorse, it did very little ecologically or visually for Tapora and the Kaipara.

“It is, quite frankly, an embarrassment to the people of Tapora when visitors and recreationalists come to see Manukapua,” local Land and Coast Care group chairman Humphrey Ikin said.

Dairy farmer Earle Wright went a little stronger.

“Tapora is no longer an undisturbed backwater – Auckland has found us and our environment is screaming at us.”

Wright wanted to cancel that environmental noise with the cries of coastal birds – oyster catchers, pied stilts, dotterels, herons, godwits and, above all, the critically endangered fairy tern, tara-iti.

Terns nested on Manukapua until the mid 1970s and at nearby Journey’s End spit until the 1930s but only a handful were now found on very isolated Papakanui spit on South Kaipara Head.

Godwits made Manukapua among their first ports of call in New Zealand after the annual longest non-stop migration flight of any sea bird from China and Alaska.

The name Cloud of Birds resulted from Maori canoe migration and navigation from Polynesia to Kaipara and the profusion of birdlife they found there.

Manukapua and Tapora were the focus of the 640,000ha Kaipara catchment – whatever happened upstream found its way to the Kaipara entrance, directly opposite.

Sediment run-off from land clearance for farming and forestry had deposited 1.5m of silt in the lower reaches over the past 100 years, causing some genetic modification of snapper, 95% of which on the upper North Island west coast were born in the Kaipara.

For those geographic reasons Tapora embraced the Integrated Kaipara Harbour Management Group (IKHMG) and its objectives.

Almost an island, the Tapora end of Okahukura peninsula had about 400 people, many of whom had roots in the post-war settlement of returned soldiers on to small dairy farms and larger sheep and beef farms.

Still among the population were Pierre and Jackie Chatelanat, who gave the 800ha Atiu Creek Farm to the people of NZ in 2006. It is now a regional park and working farm.

British-born Chatelanat bought the whole 5000ha peninsula in the early 1950s then sold more than 80% to the Lands and Survey Department for the resettlement scheme.

The Wright family, of Te Uri-o-Hau, took up dairy farming, now continued by Earle and his brother Willie, who is also chairman of the Northland Conservation Board and IKHMG.

The Wright farm was a flagship site for IKHMG, to showcase best environmental practices in a sensitive environment.

Milking 300 Holstein Friesian cows on 120ha, the farm budget aimed for 120,000kg milksolids using system 3 management by feeding maize and grass silage and some palm kernel.

Typical of Tapora dairy farms, it was low-lying and sand-based with some wetlands, very prone to drought and best practice dairying now sought to mitigate sedimentary, nutrient and coliform outflows to the harbour.

“Long-term my aim is to be as nutrient neutral as possible to show that dairy farming is not environmentally negative, as well as to beautify my land and encourage birdlife,” Earle Wright said.

“Every dairy farmer seems to get the blame for the bad actions of a few – we don’t do that for other occupations.”

Wright planted 3500 trees on his farm last year among 7500 planted around Tapora.

He had retired from grazing then fenced and planted waterways and wetlands for the past seven years and now planned to widen the riparian zones further.

Water testing had shown an improvement in water quality resulting from riparian retirement, with an abundance of healthy aquatic life, he said.

Tapora Primary School had encouraged pupils to plant trees and come up with sustainability ideas the community could execute.

The Land and Coast Care Group had attacked pest and predator populations on what was called from the 1990s onward the 4000ha Tapora Mainland Island.

It did so through voluntary levies and help from the council, though there was no discrimination for pest control activities as most land owners paid in cash or kind, Ikin said.

Tapora had become a focal point of the IKHMG movement, which Willie Wright described as “run on manuwhenua with western science”.

Already a unique district, Tapora was seeing a new wave of development march across the flats.

It was now the fastest-growing part of the NZ avocado industry, with plans for tens of thousands of trees to be planted.

Three big orchard developments had displaced dairy farms and drawn a different pattern on the landscape.

They were headed by Tony Gibbs, of Matakana, a large mandarin grower and former chairman of Turners and Growers, partners Hamish Alexander, owner of Southern Paprika, and Glen Inger, the large local landowner and former Warehouse chief executive and horticultural leader John Greensmith.

The Alexander-Inger Harbour Edge orchard was planned to be the largest in NZ, at 250ha.

Project manager Nick Common said the former 400ha dairy farm since the 1950s was destined for avocados and other crops, along with native plantings on hills and in wetlands.

Its success was predicated on free-draining soils, lack of frosts and irrigation from ground water and lake storage.

While Tapora resolved to restore the past glories of shore bird population, it had related and more immediate issues to address, Greensmith said.

Representing the Tapora Ratepayers’ Association, he told an IKHMG open day that fire was the greatest proven risk to the whole community, possibly originating in the sadly neglected Okahukura reserve.

His own orchard development was next to the reserve.

“Within this community we have the resources to tackle the environmental issues while respecting the history, cultural values and bird life.

“We are working on a community initiative for conservation before approaching DOC and Auckland Council with a plan.”

That would involve weed clearance, fire break cutting then native plantings.

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