Manaaki Whenua - Constructed Wetlands Project (Community Environment Fund) скачать в хорошем качестве

Manaaki Whenua - Constructed Wetlands Project (Community Environment Fund)

Prior to the lockdown, the Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research has been working with local farmers, the Taupiri Marae, the Taupiri community and NIWA New Zealand to improve water quality in one of the area’s most important waterways. To date, they have constructed two wetlands, planted over 18,000 plants, and held wetland ecology workshops with kids from Taupiri School! Great mahi team! Ministry for the Environment is proud to support the project through the Community Environment Fund. Full Transcript: This project is about building integrated constructed wetlands. The goal of the project was actually to reduce the impact of dairying; so nitrogen, phosphorus as well as sediment, from entering the Whangamaire streams and that does connect back up in to the Waikato which is our awa. Adult: Do you guys know what kind of tree this is? Children: Kōwhai tree. Adult: Good it is a kōwhai tree! Did you know back in the day Taupiri was actually filled with Kōwhai trees? That’s why Taupiri Marae’s colours are kōwhai and pango. The idea was to work together for the benefit of our future generations alongside farm owners. They came to the Marae with Suzanne from Landcare Research to ask what we thought of the idea and we looked at how we could do this together for the future generations of Taupiri. Children: Can we just eat it? The hands-on experiences bringing in the plants today and seeing their faces when they were learning and getting in there when they made their own wetlands was really exciting. Adult: That's perfect! Beautiful, thank you. Schoolkid 1: What we learned today was how the plants can clean the water from the farms and how it goes into the Waikato River. Schoolkid 2: We don’t want all of our water getting dirty because then we can’t drink any of it. From a practical point of view we’ve managed to actually physically establish these treatment systems on two farms. Our landowners did put in $3000 a piece to help with our construction but they’ve also put in an awful lot of time. They’ve retired land, they’ve fenced stuff off for us so that people can come and see what they’re doing. So far we’ve planted about 18,000 plants, as well as the restorative planting sites. We’ve had about 50 volunteers, and we’ve had about 230 volunteer hours to date. The community environment fund was actually vital for us to be able to do this work. Clean water is for everybody. It’s about having a better environment it’s about having a future for our children and generations to come.