Coast mission wins green award

Tyron Draper (left) and Ethan Habib-Mitchell examine an eel.

TOLAGA Bay’s Uawanui collaborative catchment management project has won the 2016 Green Ribbon Award for Protecting our Biodiversity.

Environment Minister Nick Smith and Conservation Minister Maggie Barry hosted the award ceremony at a recent function at Parliament Buildings.

Uawanui had its beginnings in 2004, when science and film-making projects by Tolaga Bay Area School students focused on the Transit of Venus and won a Royal Society of New Zealand prize.

Three students and a teacher visited Britain that year, establishing relationships with the London Museum of Natural History, Royal Society and London’s Kew Gardens, where Joseph Banks donated New Zealand flora specimens in 1770, on his return from Cook’s first voyage.

Uawanui chairman Victor Walker said the next step was for Te Atainga-a-Hauti and the Tolaga Bay/Uawa community to develop a sustainable, shared, holistic long-term vision following consultation with the community, land-owners, forestry companies and other stakeholders.

“This vision is driven by a commitment to enhance the environment, community and economy of the catchment and coastline for current and future generations, and the landmarks on the way to achieving it,” says Victor.

“The ‘dual heritage, shared future’ is important, as is ensuring sustainability of the environment and the people who live here,” he says.

“We want to build up a psyche of science in the community.”

That starts with the involvement of Tolaga Bay Area School (TBAS) and Kahukuranui students who work on Uawanui projects with all their teachers, although predominantly led by environmental science teacher Richard Tuhaka.

“Environmental sustainability is an NCEA subject, and we are now at the point of introducing it at NCEA level 3,” says principal Nori Parata, who notes the success of science at both TBAS and among former students doing post-graduate studies at universities.

To date implementation of Uawanui has also involved the Hauiti and Mangaheia Incorporations (including major work around the Kaitawa Estuary by Hauiti Incorporation) and many community members.

Uawanui covers the Uawa catchment, an area from Waihau Bay-Loisels Beach to beyond Anauru Bay and the catchment from beyond the Mata Road, inland to Tauwhareparae and south to the Henri Loisel Reserve.

This part of the East Coast has significant native forests, extensive flora and fauna, fertile soils, the Uawa-Hikuwai river and dramatic coastal landscape. It also has a multitude of archaeological sites, indicating extensive Maori activity in pre-European times.

Tolaga Bay’s rural hinterland varies from some of the most fertile river flats in New Zealand to hard hill country with notable erosion problems.

Importantly, the Tolaga Bay area — including Anaura Bay and Opoutama-Cook’s Cove — is the first place in New Zealand where the Endeavour crew had positive contact with the tangata whenua.

A diarist aboard Endeavour wrote: “Throughout this district the people seemed free from apprehension and as in a state of profound peace; their cultivations were far more numerous and larger than we saw them anywhere else, and they had a far greater quantity of fine boats, fine cloths, fine carved work; in short the people were far more numerous and lived in far greater affluence than any others we saw.”

With the support of Sir Paul Callaghan, the Uawanui governance group sought expert scientific assistance and facilitation from the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution (AWC), one of the Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs) and charged with securing New Zealand’s biodiversity and human and environmental health.

This enabled a concentration of scientists to inject focus and scientific discipline for the project.

“He Manawa Whenua — He Oranga Tangata (Healthy Environment - Healthy People) is a big part of what it’s all about,” says Victor.

“We undertake life-long learning to provide a well-educated, thoughtful, creative and motivated people who manage our land, water and coastal resources wisely and innovate to generate ongoing prosperity.”

Developing vision and valuesThe AWC helped in the development of the vision and values, which were launched at Hauiti Marae on March 20, 2014, and in many of Uawanui’s early initiatives.

The Government ended funding for the AWC in December last year, but practical and scientific input has been continued by Groundtruth’s Peter Handford, who has science, forestry and conservation qualifications.

However, central to Project Uawanui is the fact that it is owned and implemented by the people of Uawa-Tolaga Bay at their own pace.

Project Uawanui was coming together when Tolaga Bay hosted hundreds who came to view the Transit of Venus on June 6, 2012, and the importance of Uawanui was discussed at the Transit of Venus forum in Gisborne later that week.

To supplement the voluntary work at the coalface by local people and by school pupils, Project Uawanui is funded by the Te-Aitanga-Hauiti Centre of Excellence, the Ministry for the Environment, the Department of Conservation, World Wildlife Fund and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Eastern Institute of Technology horticulture students and Gisborne District Council are also involved in the project.

Uawanui seen as a model project in New ZealandRestoration of the Uawa riverbank was an early practical implementation of Uawanui, and continues to this day.

Exotic trees, mainly willows, had been used to retain the lower reaches of the Uawa but became overgrown, and gorse and other weeds also infested the area. The stretch of riverbank bounding the Tolaga Bay Area School and Kahukuranui is being cleared by science students.

Other early work has been a project to identify and eradicate spartina grass in the area, a small marae restoration project, amelioration of whitebait spawning areas, native species planting near the Tolaga Bay surf club, and the establishment of a beehive at Tolaga Bay Area School and Kahukuranui for junior students to become familiar with a fast-growing industry on the East Coast.

Tolaga Bay Area School and Kahukuranui have been active in monitoring a population of native bats found in the Mangatokerau gorge. Their monitoring visits with detectors have also located bats at Anauru Reserve in Anauru Bay.

There has also been a follow-up to the students visit to Kew gardens back in 2004. The gardens have been able to send samples descended from the flora deposited by Joseph Banks nearly 250 years ago back to Tolaga where they have been used in replanting native plants.

These early Project Uawanui endeavours — along with other community initiatives including the restoration of the wharf and community venue Reynolds Hall — contributed to Tolaga Bay earning second place in the KiwiBank Community of the Year Awards in 2013.

“Uawanui is seen as a model project within New Zealand of a community working to improve its environment and prosperity,” says Peter Handford of Groundtruth.

More recently there has been a concentration on the nesting and breeding ground of the tuturiwhatu (NZ dotterel) at the Kaitawa estuary. The habitat has been fenced to permanently exclude stock, predator traps have been installed, and a solar-powered CCTV camera has been installed for monitoring activity in the area.

Future plans include addressing the water quality of the Uawa River. At present it is swimmable, but there are plans to attend to the problem of logs ending up on the beach.

Inland from Tolaga Bay, there are areas of diverse lowland native bush larger than Gray’s Bush in Poverty Bay. Early weed control has occurred in some of these areas with help from the QEII Trust and Weedbusters. Planning has started on how to both preserve it and utilise it.

“While there are farmers in the area who have planted trees extensively, a future stage of Uawanui will involve work with farmers to support projects such as tree-planting to protect at-risk soils and waterways, and work with forestry companies to support and link to their environmental projects,” Peter says.