The Motueka Catchment Collective has been successful in its bid for funding from the Ministry for Primary Industries Essential Freshwater Fund, winning $870,000 to be spent over the next three years, in its application via the Tasman Environmental Trust.
The funding will support community efforts to improve freshwater health, focussing at sub-catchment group and farmer level as well as with thematic groups on priority issues already identified through community meetings.
However, with 30% of the productive land use in the catchment being forestry, the forestry sector is a key component, and a Forestry Working Group has been set up that will develop a strategic plan of action for the Collective.
Other thematic groups include river management, biodiversity restoration, weed/pest control, and river access & recreation. It is good to see the recent emergence of a strong farmers group in the upper Motueka focused on river flood management, working with the Council and taking on that aspect.
We’ll be setting up the Collective’s governance structure in the first year and have provision for recruiting a catchment facilitator, support for iwi involvement and a catchment health monitoring framework that has stronger community engagement.
The subsequent two years will have more funding for the initiatives identified by the community groups, and we’ll be working closely with others like TDC, New Zealand Landcare Trust and Beef+Lamb with their extension programmes.
We'll be in touch shortly with more details on next steps and also the advertising for the catchment facilitator role/s.
