$970,000 of Ministry for Primary Industries funding allocated to Central Hawke’s Bay catchment collective

Richard Hilson, chairman of the newly formed Tukituki Land Care, speaking at the official launch this month.

Tukituki Land Care (TLC), a farmer-led collective, has been allocated $970,000 by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) over the next three years to work with sub-catchment groups of the Tukituki River, enabling funding and action to benefit the region.

TLC will work with 17 catchments in Central Hawke’s Bay, covering 216,000 hectares of private land made up of nearly 1000 farms surrounding Waipukurau, Waipawa, Takapau, Ongaonga, Tikokino, Ōtāne, Elsthorpe, Ōmakere and Ashley Clinton.

The group was officially launched on May 17 at the Takapau Town Hall, where the TLC Committee, along with local farmers, iwi, conservationists, sub-catchment representatives, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council (HBRC) and local and district councillors, welcomed the funding announcement made at the event by Alastair Cole from MPI’s Sustainable Regions directorate.

Some of the TLC committee members with Alistair Cole from MPI’s Sustainable Regions directorate (far right).

“This funding will be used for an extension programme, knowledge gain, capacity building and co-ordination,” said Alastair. “I would like to think that this is very much a partnership, and core to that is that we are here to actively support the conversations and the work ahead.”

Richard Hilson, chairman of the newly formed Tukituki Land Care, is involved with a number of catchment groups in the upper end of the Tukituki.

“It became very apparent that there were a lot of really busy people putting their hands up, but they were all time-poor and searching for a route through the mire of administration,” Hilson said.

“They had no guidance and no money. There was a whole lot of folk putting in a whole lot of effort, and they were getting bogged down”.

Representatives from existing sub-catchment groups, along with Richard Wakelin, then-senior catchment adviser at the HBRC, took part in two facilitated workshops last year, and the consensus was that there was an appetite for an overarching group.

A committee was formed and Tukituki Land Care was created. The group will act as a “cohesive voice for the land”. They will provide a mechanism for collective activity that benefits the land across the Tukituki River catchment.

“Ultimately, we want to take the pressure off people and get stuff done,” said Hilson.

“If we can take some admin off people, that is great. We can also find funding opportunities, we can take interesting stuff from one sub-catchment to the next and we can reach the whole community [to talk] about things that are happening in one sub-catchment that might be applicable to another community or catchment.

“Those are the sorts of things we hope to do and [aim to] eat the elephant just one bite at a time, not try to do the whole thing in one go.”

For further information, please contact Tukituki Land Care catchment lead Michelle Goodman by emailing tukitukilandcare@gmail.com.

Phone: 027 474 9998

Website: www.tukitukilandcare.org.