DAIRY 101 CATCHMENT GROUPS
Get involved with your catchment group Story and photos by: Karen Trebilcock
T
here are now more than a hundred catchment groups throughout the country, and if you haven’t got one in your area that you can join, maybe it’s time you began thinking about starting one yourself. Catchment groups get all farmers in an area together – not just dairy and including forestry – to work on improving the waterways that run through their land. Some include towns, making sure urban people get involved and are doing their bit as well. DairyNZ, NZ Landcare Trust, Beef + Lamb NZ and regional councils all support catchment groups, and if you are not sure if one is already set up in your area, get in touch with these organisations and they will be able to tell you. NZ Landcare Trust has a map of catchment groups on their website, and there are still parts of the country, especially in the North Island, that don’t have them.
GETTING STARTED
Read about catchment groups on the internet, ring your neighbours, organise a get-together and see if you have enough people interested to share the workload. Figure out your catchment boundaries, a few goals, and if it’s a “yes” then it is time to get the whole community on board. Advertise a public meeting and get people involved. Invite someone from one of the support organisations, such as Landcare Trust, who has had experience with other catchment groups to explain how it all works. Figure out what is important to everyone about their catchment – what they use it for. It might be for fishing, swimming, irrigation, duck shooting or stock drinking water. Maybe it’s home to endangered, 76
Primary school children visit a stream on an Otago dairy farm.
native species, both in and above the water. Or maybe it’s home to some species such as rats that you would rather do without. It’s a start that will then allow the group to set some short-term goals, such as water testing and a stock take of the environment, and longer-term goals such as riparian planting and predator control. Maybe you once swam in the river but now are worried about letting your children do it because of the water quality. Having a goal of making it safe to swim in again will energise a group to test the water regularly and figure out what is going on and why.
RESOURCES
Do a stocktake of what you have got. Pooling local knowledge is great, but also see if there is water monitoring testing already being done by your regional council and find out what information they have. Fish and Game and the Department of Conservation might also be able to help. Also do a stocktake of the skills of people in your group. Hopefully you
have someone who is keen to take on the co-ordinator’s role, others who have easy access to the waterway for regular water testing, and someone who is good with finances and filling in funding applications. Water testing and planting riparian strips takes money but catchment groups can apply for a variety of funds worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can establish your catchment group as either an incorporated society or a charitable trust, which helps with funding applications. You may wish to set up member subscriptions as well, and some larger catchment groups pay their coordinator for their time. As well, you can set up a website about your catchment and include the group’s aims and progress, which can become a historical record of what you have achieved. And there might be someone with an empty tunnel house who likes growing seedlings, and others who love an excuse for a day in the bush or along the river to collect native seeds for them. Or someone who is keen on predator control and wants a supply of possum fur.
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | October 2020
