Funding boost to monitor native birds

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from Northern Outlook

By David Hill, Local Democracy Reporter

A project to monitor native birds on the Ashley Rakahuri River has received a funding boost from the Waimakariri Zone Committee.

The Ashley Rakahuri Rivercare Group will receive $9000 from the zone committee’s 2023-24 action plan budget to assist with the costs of its shorebird monitoring.

The group extended its monitoring efforts last year, engaging a postgraduate student from the University of Canterbury to undertake the work.

The project monitored banded dotterel/turiwhatu, pied stilt (poaka), black-fronted and white-fronted tern/tarapirohe and tara, South Island pied oystercatcher/tōrea and black-billed and black-backed gull/tarāpuka and karoro.

Zone committee chairperson Carolyne Latham said the rivercare group had been working to protect native birds on the river and estuary for several years.

"You have to admire them for getting on with the work," she said.

"We are pleased to be contributing to the extension of that work which will expand the data that we have on the birds."

The rivercare group has been working with Eleanor Gunby, who is studying for a masters of science degree under the supervision of Professor Jim Briskie.

The project was the first to receive funding for the new financial year.

The funding has increased from $50,000 to $75,000 this year and Latham said the committee was keen to hear from other groups working on projects to enhance the environment and water ways.

"We want to hit the ground running this year and so we encourage groups to get in contact with the zone committee if they have a project."

She said the action plan budget funding was similar to the "immediate steps" funding, which zone committees had allocated in the past, but it had greater flexibility.

"We have more scope to support a wider range of projects and an example of this is a water monitoring project by the Waimakariri Landcare Trust, which wouldn’t have qualified under the immediate steps funding. Identifying where groundwater and surface water monitoring is happening in the zone is something we have been talking about at the zone committee for a while.

"We are delighted the trust is proceeding with the project, which will also trial nitrate testing in private wells."

The Waimakariri Landcare Trust’s monitoring project received $26,400 out of the $50,000 available in the zone committee’s 2022-23 action plan budget.

The Waimakariri Zone Committee is a joint committee of Environment Canterbury and the Waimakariri District Council.

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Photo: Banded dotterels (pohowera) pictured on on the the Ashley-Rakahuri River. Photo supplied by Grant Davey of the Ashley-Rakahuri Rivercare Group