Funding creates environmental benefits, jobs and hope

Shayne and Elizabeth MacKenzie fenced off 4 kilometres of the Waikawau River and planted out the riparian margins.

Without funding, Shayne and Elizabeth MacKenzie wouldn’t have been able to fence off and riparian plant the waterway on their Waikawau Bay property, to protect it from stock.

Thanks to Waikato Regional Council’s catchment new works budget and Colville Junction’s Moehau ki te Moana project, the MacKenzies received full funding to fence off 4 kilometres of the Waikawau River, which stock used for drinking water, and to plant out the riparian margins with 4000 native plants, and some funding towards putting in a reticulation system of 19 concrete troughs.

Shayne and Elizabeth, who have a beekeeping business in Colville, had recently bought the 110-hectare property and although Elizabeth had grown up on a farm and worked on farms after completing a Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Honours), owning a farm was a new experience for them.

The property has significant stands of puriri that are now protected from stock with fencing.

“Times got really tough,” Shayne says.

“We had two years of drought, then COVID hit, the market fell out of the honey, and then we only harvested 8 per cent of an average crop during the cyclones in 2023. There were a lot of knock-on effects for an isolated community.

“Looking at farming, I realise the Coromandel isn’t the easiest place. The nature of the steep land and the bush, and everything is so far away. The remoteness, everything is super expansive, it all adds to the difficulties. It’s expensive to get contractors and supplies in, and during COVID we had to get a permit to go to Auckland to get supplies. There were so many challenges.”

The MacKenzies were among a number of landowners who approached Colville Junction, the local community centre hub, for help.

The couple say the funding also gave jobs to locals, and hope.

On behalf of the landowners, the community centre applied to the Ministry for the Environment’s Freshwater Improvement Fund in 2020 to collaboratively work with farmers, iwi and community to restore the waters of the Moehau catchments by excluding stock from waterways and planting native trees around waterways and wetlands. It received $1.21 million over five years for the Moehau Ki Te Moana project.

This funding has also enabled the community centre to expand Colville Harbour Care’s nursery, hire staff to oversee the project and employ local contractors for fencing and planting.

Through the project, landowners get a subsidy of up to 70 per cent of the cost of fencing and planting, while Waikato Regional Council’s catchment new works budget incentivises landowners with up to 35 per cent of costs.

The council has funding to help landowners improve freshwater quality in their catchments.

“We couldn’t even have been able to afford 30 per cent of the cost – that’s where the regional council came in,” says Shayne, who was able to contribute to his share of the costs by building his own fences and putting in the reticulation himself.

“It kept us busy when we really needed it – it was good for our mental health.

“People lent us equipment and diggers to get our project under control.

“So, the funding not only created environmental benefits, it also gave jobs to locals and it gave hope.”

Shayne says he’s really happy with how everything has worked out.

“It was a really good learning. The river is in a highly volatile floodplain, so we put in 2.4 metre strainer posts as the ground is soft, solid concrete troughs that won’t get washed away in a flood, and 3 wire fencing that would be more economical to replace with constant flooding.

“It was important for us to do this work despite the flood risk because the river feeds into the beautiful Waikawau Bay. It’s such an awesome beach; it’s good to keep it clean.

“The stock are staying on the right side of the creek, and they prefer to drink from the troughs.

“We’ve planted 4000 plants so far, with more to go in in the 2025 planting season; we’re working out how many we’ll need. And we’ll also fence off the upper catchment bush block on our land. We are trying to make it look nice, there is pride involved.”

Waikato Regional Council catchment management officer Elaine Iddon says the MacKenzies’ property has biodiversity values worth protecting.

“Along the river there are some significant stands of puriri, nikau and other emergent species of native trees that were in poor health but are now being protected from stock tread.

“This property has the lower reaches of a coastal forest and scrubland that are internationally significant because it has rare species such as North Island brown kiwi, coromandel striped gecko and Pittosporum virgatum present.”

Beth Pearsall, who works for Colville Junction overseeing the environmental monitoring for Moehau Ki Te Moana, says the project is creating habitat where before there was just grass.

“These landowners all came to us, it’s what they wanted to do, and we had three weeks to get an application in. Now we’re growing up to 35,000 plants in the nursery a year to benefit the Moehau catchment, we’re doing pest plant and animal control and we’re implementing a robust environmental monitoring plan.”