The funding comes from the Waikato River Authority (WRA) and is for projects involving landowners, iwi and community groups, with project management by Waikato Regional Council.
It includes $1.34 million over three years towards stage two of the Council’s partnership Ngā Wai o Waikato project in the lower Waikato River catchment to support landowners wishing to retire and plant erodible hill country and stream margins and retire forest remnants.
Also included in the funding is $402,739 over three years to the new central Waikato hill country and streambank erosion protection and remediation project in partnership with Ngāti Hauā Mahi Trust.
A further $331,200 over three years will go towards the Kura Waiti ki Kura Waita (River Schools to Moana Schools) programme to develop and implement an advancing mātauranga māori kaupapa in environmental education.
The programme was launched earlier this year as the result of a search for a meaningful way to support children with environmental learning in a way that supported te reo, tikanga and mātauranga, says Kaihapa Hotaka Mātauranga Arna Solomon-Banks.
“Kura Waitī is about engaging our rangatahi in fun ways, hands on, on the awa, learning about the tikanga of waka and the mātauranga, the stories of the awa from the awa people, and sharing that reliving.”
Waikato and West Coast catchments manager Grant Blackie says that by applying for funding from organisations like WRA, it gives security to projects over multiple years and gives landowners the incentive to go above and beyond the environmental work they might normally do.
“This means, in the past five years, we have jointly been able to financially assist 1,823 landowners by offering greater incentives for fencing and planting or hill country erosion work than if we were to rely just on the rates we collect for catchment management,” he says.
The council is also a co-funder (to a total of $112,560) of three other projects to receive WRA funding. They are:
- Waikato River Care’s Opuatia Wetland project, which supports wider work in the catchment and wetland
- Stage 2 of the Mangaorongo Stream Restoration Project
- Te Puea Hērangi wetland restoration project with Tūrangawaewae Trust Board and Fonterra.
