Project Title: Tomarata Farm Stream Planting 2016: Hoteo River Catchment

Project Description:

Project update 11 April 2016:

We are very pleased to note that the $2000 in match funding for this project has been used – thanks so much to everyone who has donated to the project over the last month or so. We are now at 80% of our target with 20 days left to reach 100%. Please share the project as far and wide as you can to help us make it all the way there!

Project update 10 March 2016: 

We are very pleased to say we now have match-funding for this project! Any contribution that comes into the project from today will be matched, doubling the impact of your contribution. This is up to the value of $2000 that we have received for the project to be used for match-funding purposes. 

Project Description: 

At the headwaters of the Hoteo River – Auckland’s largest – you’ll find John and Geraldine Taylor’s 178 ha drystock farm, Tomarata Farms. For ten years, the Taylors have been progressively fencing their waterways, gullies and wetlands. This crowdfunding campaign will enable the next stage of environmental protection – revegetating one of the main gullies that cradles the Waiteitei stream, a tributary of the Hoteo. 

At 28 kilometres long, the Hoteo is Auckland’s largest in volume, length and catchment size. It drains approximately 408km²  into the ecologically sensitive Kaipara Harbour. Remarkably the river spans virtually the entire island from Te Arai in the east to the Kaipara in the west. 

Sediment is identified as the most important threat to health to both the river and the Kaipara, and the catchment is a significant contributor. This sediment has a strong negative impact on the seagrass meadows in the Kaipara Harbour, critical breeding grounds for 90 per cent of the snapper found off New Zealand’s west coast.

John and Geraldine believe you can’t farm now like you did 50 years ago, and that farmers need to make a mind shift to embrace environmental challenges like this one. 

As members of the Forest Bridge Trust – a farmer-initiated environment trust that supports outstanding land stewardship in the Hoteo catchment –  they are acting on the vision to create a thriving corridor from the Omaha Estuary on the East Coast to the Southern Kaipara Harbour. This will not only help reduce sediment reaching the Kaipara snapper breeding grounds, but will also improve the biodiversity of the waterway and catchment.

Having observed first hand the benefits of excluding stock from the most marginal land on their property, the Taylors are strong advocates for sustainable land management.