Council helps landowners retire 940ha and plant nearly 450,000 trees in 2023/24

Despite rising farm expenses and reduced profit margins, landowners still worked with Waikato Regional Council to undertake voluntary environmental action on a total of 296 properties across the region in 2023/24.

At the council’s Integrated Catchment Management Committee meeting on Thursday last week, Waikato West Coast Catchments Manager Grant Blackie told councillors that landowners had collectively completed nearly 150 kilometres of fencing, planted nearly 450,000 plants and retired nearly 940 hectares of land.

“That’s a pretty significant amount of work in these trying circumstances,” said Blackie, whose report to the committee noted a marked reduction in landowner uptake of incentivised catchment work compared to previous years, even with high levels of funding on offer by the council, Waikato River Authority and the Ministry for Primary Industries.

In comparison, but with higher levels of funding, in 2022/23 the council worked with 341 landowners in 2022/23 to retire 1726 hectares of land, plant 950,000 native trees and protect 137 kilometres of waterways.  

The report to the committee says: “Despite an excellent grass growing year, the most common reason given by landowners to delaying work relates to lower discretionary farm income, resulting from a combination of poor returns, high ‘farm gate’ inflation and increases in debt-servicing costs. In addition, there is now regulatory uncertainty for landowners relating to freshwater and greenhouse gas emission requirements and the functioning of the emissions trading scheme.”

Hauraki Coromandel Catchments Manager Emily O’Donnell says she encourages landowners and land managers to take advantage of current funding opportunities available.

“We have skilled catchment management officers covering all of our region who can provide advice and information specific to your property,” says O’Donnell.

“In many cases, the funding to support this work is only available within a certain time frame, so don’t miss out: give one of our team a call today and see if your project qualifies for funding.”

Waikato Regional Council undertakes river and catchment planning and management activities within zones based on catchment boundaries.

The council’s catchment programmes deliver restoration works, including soil erosion control and prevention, river management work, riparian protection through fencing and planting, lake and wetland protection and enhancement and bush fragment protection.

This voluntary catchment and river restoration work is funded in different ways throughout the region, with funding coming from rates and/or by the council applying for funding for various work programmes from other organisations.

In 2023/24, the council also received significant co-funding for river management work from the Government in response to the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle and other widespread North Island weather events.

The amount of funding available to landowners depends on whether landowners are in an identified priority catchment and whether the council has secured additional funding for work programmes outside business as usual.

Funding ranges from 35 per cent of costs to 80 per cent, depending on the location, type of work and funding available, and landowners are able to use their labour and materials contributions as work in kind.

Blackie says in 2023/24, to encourage landowner uptake, the council targeted mailouts to landowners within priority catchments (along with other measures to promote landowner uptake).

“The response from landowners was pretty good, with the best response coming from landowners in the West Coast zone, although most of the benefits from that will be seen in 2024/2025 and beyond”.

While this may mean some landowners are holding off making decisions, they could miss out on the current funding opportunities available to assist with catchment work”

A seven-year summary of catchment restoration activities has shown the council has worked with landowners and iwi to complete almost 1600 kilometres of fencing, retiring 8442 hectares of riparian or erosion prone land and planting over 4.5 million plants.