Advisors for Auckland Council’s Regional Waterway Protection Fund are available to visit landowners considering applying.
This year the Taitaia, Whangapouri, Ngakaroa and Aotea Great Barrier catchments are targeted, with enquiries sought from landowners with waterways on properties of five hectares or more.
Franklin Local Board’s fund and the regional fund have delivered benefits across the region, with tracts of waterway fencing and planting put in place.
“Their value can’t be understated,” board deputy chair and farmer Alan Cole says.
“We have seen improvements in water quality, and the partnerships formed between landowners and volunteers during planting days and the like are invaluable.”
He says the board continues to champion conservation through the Franklin fund and fully endorses the regional fund which awards grants to encourage landowners to restore streams by offering 50 per cent funding for fencing and planting.
“We take pride in our natural resources, and we are committed to enhancing, protecting and maintaining our waterways,” Cole says.
A veteran of planting on his own property, Cole says the fund can play a vital role, having been created to encourage landowners to benefit aquatic life in streams and reduce contaminant flow to the Manukau Harbour.
“Landowners are fencing and planting and taking on predator control along valuable waterways and the fund demonstrates people care about streams and want to pass them on in a better state than they received them in,” Cole says.
Grants are made for waterway protection to exclude stock from streams, channels, wetlands, overland flow paths, and springs, while there is also funding available to install alternative water supplies.
Email regionalwpf@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz, or phone 09 890 7140 to inquire. More here, with inquiries being taken now so advisors can help with applications, which are open 1-30 September.
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