Wild connections key to Wairau recovery
The Wairau Nature Network aims to connect up both the many smaller patches of environmental work into larger pathways, and the people doing the work. Photo: Supplied.
Just as many hands make light work, many small native restoration efforts make an easier pathway to survival for native wildlife.
After forming two years ago, the Wairau Nature Network has launched a new website which aims to tie together the many small restoration projects throughout the Wairau River’s almost 3500 square km catchment.
WNN coordinator Wendy Sullivan says that with the Wairau’s catchment having beneath the 15 percent threshold of native vegetation required to help native species thrive, the act of piecing together ecological corridors across property boundaries will allow the native wildlife to flourish.
“It's an umbrella group to try mentor, upskill and motivate people to do restoration across private and public land with individuals, lifestyle block owners, farmers, vineyards”, she says.
“Many people are trying to do their little bit of restoration, but it can be quite lonely and disheartening if you're just protecting your patch – people feel like ‘what difference am I making?’.
“The Network idea is that if we approach it from a catchment-wide scale, every individual is like a piece of the jigsaw puzzle coming together.”
The recently launched website is considered by Wendy to be a “major milestone” for the WNN, bringing together advice for correct planting, trapping, bird population monitoring and seed collection as well as any local updates.
“If we can get people to think about “I am doing my hectare of restoration planting, there's DoC land up the valley I could link myself with through a riparian margin and get my neighbour involved, and suddenly there's some connectivity going on around the landscape.
“That means that the wildlife and the plants can disperse and spread naturally and make everything more robust.
“There are groups doing some awesome work across the region, but the connectivity between those groups in past has gone missing a little bit.
“We're not there to take over anyone else's project, we’re reinforcing what they're doing, and giving them the networks to expand and support each other.”
https://wairaunaturenetwork.org.nz/