Ruud Kleinpaste is the show host of A River's Journey (working title), taking viewers along the Ruamāhanga River from source to sea and uncovering fascinating discoveries along the way.

Documentary filmmaker and producer Campbell McLean said the project highlighted the importance of respecting the needs of the living river and the rich biodiversity it supported.

“Insects, birds, forests, wetlands, and communities, we are all bound together and we depend on this rather fragile ecosystem to work the way nature intended,” he said.

McLean, a Ruamahanga Restoration Trust trustee, said the idea for the film emerged after he invited Kleinpaste to speak at several local schools.

“Ruud is very well-known and respected as a naturalist and entomologist ... he's our very own version of David Attenborough, so who better to highlight our biodiversity and the need to protect it for future generations.”

McLean said Kleinpaste made a surprising discovery of what appears to be a regurgitated pellet from a New Zealand Kingfisher at the edge of the river at Morrisons Bush.

“It has the odd appearance of a dark muesli bar, compacted with the indigestible outer exoskeletons of various insects.

“Anyone else wouldn't have noticed this lying among the rocks, but not Ruud – he was onto it straight away.”

McLean invited students from two schools to attend field trips.

“Our ongoing signature project, Schools Behind Our River, which has engaged with some 27 schools since it began in 2020, supports and encourages all manner of outdoor learning.”

“If we can convey this message to our youth and have them take up this cause as future guardians then the river and everything else will be in better hands in years to come.”

A small group of students from Opaki School joined Kleinpaste at Dunvegan Station, north of Opaki.

“So for the Opaki students, the native forest there is familiar turf, but having Ruud on site to dig around for insects and to entertain them with a weta was quite an eye-opener,” McLean said.

Another group from Featherston School visited Waihenga, south of Martinborough.

“Again, the students were fixated on Ruud's informative discoveries, which in this case included a number of black tunnel-web spiders and the New Zealand flatworm.”

They also visited Rathkeale College, where Kleinpaste was intrigued by the spring-fed wetland and the 600-year-old Kahikatea tree, which he lay under and paid homage to.

Highlights of the journey along the river included bioluminescent limpets, the world’s only freshwater snail that produces glowing slime, and Kleinpaste netting a New Zealand drone fly, and finding black tunnel-web spiders, native flatworms, and moths in traps near the Mt Bruce river. The team also discovered freshwater koura in a swamp maire QEII wetland.

“We didn't see as many birds as we had hoped for – but if it's any consolation, they saw us, and moved on,” McLean said.

“Let's also not forget that Ruud had his finger bitten by an eel, all in the name of science.”

McLean said the idea and script came naturally, but he relied on the skills of a camera crew featuring locals Sean Woolgar and Phil Stebbing.

“They both have extensive experience filming, directing, and editing wildlife documentaries overseas.”

McLean said they were in post-production and planned to complete editing in time to submit the project to New Zealand's Doc Edge Film Festival next year.

This story was originally published in the Wairarapa Times Age on 11 December 2025.

The farm, which is upstream from Morrison’s Bush, is dominated by a steep river escarpment and includes lower paddocks that sit on the river’s flood plain.

Alan not only built a house on the property he also erected the fences and installed a water supply.

As he walks down the farm track that cuts into the side of the river terrace, Alan describes the eclectic mix of exotic and native trees. The old pines have been removed along with other exotics to make way for his native seedlings. Predator traps and bird feeders lie here and there, and several large native trees have been ringed with metal guards to deter rats and possums. “Rats and possums”, he says, “are a common problem.”

“After the regional council literally up sticks and walked away from any predator control on this property, I’ve tried my best to trap on a regular basis, but there are only so many hours in the day, and sometimes the traps are not set for months. Though I’ve trapped at least 100 feral cats since we have lived here.”

“I have always loved trees, especially native trees,” he says. “My aim was to increase the food and habitat for native birds, hence my emphasis on planting trees and bushes that carry berries and fruit of any kind.”

We climb over an electric fence into a protected remnant block that includes large stands of pukatea, one of which he says is well over 400 years old.

Alan, who is now in his mid-eighties, shows no signs of slowing down.

“I am retired, and consider myself an active person, so I take every opportunity to plant trees and help others plant trees on their planting programmes.”  

Alan stops mid-track and points out the vast carpet-like layers of tradescantia fluminensis.

“I was thrilled to see the small existing stand of mainly pukatea bush when I first viewed the property and will do all within my power to retain and protect it.  Tradescantia is the prominent weed infestation here, and I would really appreciate help to overcome it.”

Alan bends down and shows us where he has raked the tradescantia aside and how Kowhai and other native seedlings have pushed through on their own accord. While common advice suggests outgrowing the trad by planting more trees, Alan firmly believes in raking it away and keeping it weeded to help the young seedlings gain a foothold.

“I started half-heartedly planting about 16 years ago but started planting seriously about five years ago, after I took the bottom paddock out of the lease.”

Being on a flood plain means the surrounding area and paddocks often get inundated with water whenever the river is in flood. Flood waters also back up the small stream at the base of the river terrace and empty out onto the low-lying areas of the paddock.

“I found it very difficult to get trees established on my north boundary due to the frequent flooding, and the debris that came with it, landing on the fence and trees. My other attempts at establishing kahikatea on the river boundary met a similar fate, except that this was in competition with established willows, whose roots I assume prevented the kahikatea from getting established.  They’re now well established but have been very slow to grow compared with trees planted at the same time just below the escarpment.”

Small floods happen about four or more times a year. A larger flood of perhaps one meter deep can occur once or twice a year, but that doesn’t deter Alan’s vision to plant more trees both upstream and down.

“I have good relations with my neighbouring farmers who back onto the Ruamahanga river and would like to see an approach made to get them interested in planting the terrace escarpment all the way from Papawai to Martinborough.”

Walking across the property, it soon becomes very evident just how much time, work, and money has gone into Alan’s passion for planting. When questioned, Alan said he has “no idea how many” trees that he has planted but suggested “it could be many thousands.”

However, he makes one suggestion that also resonates.

“We need to bring younger people into the planting programme. To do that I think we need an incentive such as paying student loan fees as a prize or cadet programme – as a stepping stone into a career role.” 

Alan Wilde is as passionate as a person can be about planting native trees and the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust is committed to supporting him in his vision to plant the entire length of the river – however long that takes.

Eventually, Alan and his wife plan to move to a smaller home in Carterton with a proviso that he can return and continue his Wilde vision for the Ruamahanga.

The Tararua Range is what protects us, and the Ruamāhanga is what sustains us.

Several years ago, I made a journey on foot from the furthest reaches of the Ruamāhanga, north-west of Eketahuna, following it down to the sea.

In the mountains, the relatively small stream picks up water from hundreds of tiny tributaries in the tree-clad depths, until it leaves te ao ngahere, the forest world, and pushes out onto the valley plains near Pūkaha.

I found that in the forest the river sings, chuckling as it tumbles over large boulders and sighing as it eases through the steep fern-covered sides of its many gorges. Its rhythm is accented by the call of the many manu that inhabit its space. Riroriro flit among the manuka on its banks; tui call as they swap from side to side; kawau follow the path of the stream, looking for fish as they travel; kereru blunder through the trees while high above them all a karearea glides, looking for prey. The river’s banks are clad with koromiko and native brooms, their soft mauve flowers relieving the deep green of the ngahere. 

As I approached Pūkaha, I walked through a metaphorical door and entered the transformed world. I left Tane’s realm, and the beech trees turned to pines, the wood pigeons became rock pigeons, and gorse and yellow broom encroached onto the rocky shoulders of the river. Blackberry plants rambled across the river’s edges, and other garden escapes littered the gravel.

The first bridge brought the hum of transport, then it was two days walk down to Masterton, through what was once Te Tapere nui o Whatonga, the great forest of the Rangitāne tipuna. His trees, said to be so dense torches were required even during the day, had nearly all gone – sheep and cattle grazed where the forest once stood. Pine plantations were a desultory reminder of the long gone ngahere.

I passed untidy cliffs marking the spot where the 1855 earthquake formed the Hidden Lakes above the river, and then the first major tributary from the east, the Kopuaranga, joined the river under Matapihi whose hilltop urupa has watched over the river for centuries.

Hidden from sight, a different world lives on the river.  I watched black fronted dotterels racing across the gravel and sand; tarāpuka, black billed gulls, screeched in the air as I passed their nesting site among the boulders,  Paradise shelducks zonked out warnings of my approach, and the yapping call of the poaka, pied stilt, was never far away

Closer to town, civilisation intruded too. I came across the bloated carcase of a cow, and the rusting shell of a car body trapped half in the river, the rest wrapped around some willows. I saw the gravel beaches had been trampled by the tracks of a large bulldozer, and I followed its path, walking from one beach to another, carefully crossing the rushing waters at the head of the following pool.

Another day and I left Masterton, accompanied by the odour of the sewage treatment plant nearby. Soon the Waingawa joined the Ruamāhanga, bringing its own rush of water and boulders, heading through Te Whiti towards Gladstone. I was reminded of the korero of Makere Waito, whose testimony in the Māori Land court, included lists of waka that travelled up the river from the sea.

Passing Te Ana o Parakawhiti that tower over the river at Hurunuiorangi, I thought of the legend of the taniwha Ngarara Huarau and how he threshed around, changing the landscape as he moved. But more than that, I mourned over the multitude of other river stories that have been lost, only hinted at as names on old maps, or heard as whispered stories when the night falls in the wharenui.

As the days unfolded, I pushed on – past the haunted house at Kokotau, the confluence with the Waiohine, alongside the cliffs at Moiki and past the dried up bed of the Huangarua, where I found children playing on a sailboard, the only craft I saw. At the Martinborough bridge I discovered the large bulldozer that had been laying a track for my journey, pushing gravel aside as it tried to impose its shape on the riverbed.

I left Martinborough on a misty morning, travelling down the slowing river. At Pukio I slipped into a kayak and swept along the river as it widened and twisted, sometimes facing the Remutaka Range, sometimes the Aorangi mountains. Another day, at Tuhitarata, I took to my feet again, walking along a new stop bank, created when the Ruamāhanga was cut off from Wairarapa Moana.

The river had changed – what was once a bubbling torrent had become a constrained stream. The crystal clarity of its headwaters had been diminished by the towns and farms that spread their waste into the giant Ruamāhanga catchment and irrigators were pumping litres of water onto bright green paddocks. I realised the boulders I had seen in the mountains were ground down by the river, becoming smaller and smaller as I travelled.

I reached the top of Ōnoke and skirted around its sandy edges to where the river punches through the spit and into Te Moana o Raukawa. I watched it surge through the narrow channel and into the sea and thought of how that water would evaporate and be recycled through the system. It would continue the earth’s oldest story – the struggle between mountain forming tectonic forces, and wind and rain eroding them, building new land as they did.

I walked back to the Lake Ferry pub and sat with a cold beer, thinking about my journey. The sun glistened on Lake Ōnoke, but even then, my mind went back to the cool chasms at the starting point of river’s journey and mine, to where it is untroubled by man. I thought of the trees, the birds, the insects and the fish. I knew I would return there, time after time, to allow the river to restore me.

© Gareth Winter

An oxbow lake is the remains of a bend in the river that has since become stillwater with no natural inflow or outlet, as in this case when the Taumata Oxbow was cut off from the Ruamahanga due to a flood or earthquake several hundred years ago.

On our visit, QEII Trust Regional Representative Trevor Thompson walked us through the area, dodging stands of remnant kahikatea, matai, totara, and kowhai that hug the waterline, pausing every now and then to look up at the tree canopy high above our heads.

“The genetics of these old podocarps are left over from the time when the Wairarapa valley was still the most extensive podocarp primary forest in Aotearoa,” he said, turning back to gaze at us and beyond. “It’s just a glimpse of what once was.”

Walking through the trees, it’s hard to get a sense of the scale of the oxbow, which forms a curve much like a waxing crescent moon. To fully appreciate the scale and shape, one needs to view it from above.  But below the treetop canopy, as we look across the water carpeted in duckweed, Trevor informs us that despite being a wetland swamp, oxbows can dry up as their water evaporates in the heat of summer. Given the amount of rain, and the wet ground underneath our feet, that prospect seemed a long way off. But seasons and weather patterns change.

We are soon joined by Sarah Catley, Senior Environment Restoration Advisor with Greater Wellington Te Pane Matua Taiao. Sarah has taken an active interest in this particular site and explains to us that the Taumata Oxbow is a “significant natural palustrine and lacustrine swamp” that spans over 7.41 hectares. “It’s one of the few wetlands of this size and type that remain in the region,” she tells us, wide-eyed and brimming with youthful enthusiasm for her job.

According to Sarah, the Oxbow consists of a range of native flora including mature stands of kahikatea, pukatea, and tawa trees, bordered by a range of carex species alongside the water's edge. “Extensive restoration planting has occurred in parts of the Oxbow including totara, kahikatea, tī kōuka, and harakeke. The Taumata Oxbow provides habitat to a variety of native wildlife, some of which hold an “at-risk” declining status.”

As for the area’s biodiversity value, Sarah informs us that a survey undertaken in 2013 found species including weweia, kawaupaka, tūī, māpunga, kererū, riroriro, pārera, kōtare, brown mudfish, and New Zealand longfin eel. “Along with its rich biodiversity value, the Oxbow also has a range of pest plants and animals that threaten the ecological value of the wetland.”

Putting threats aside, we stumble through the undergrowth and into a grassy open patch encircled with young totara planted 25 years ago. Trevor points out another area that was first covenanted in 1992. The aim is to get more of this area placed into covenant. He’s still working on that.

Thankfully, the private landowners – including Mike Warren whose block we are planting – are working with a range of organisations including the Queen Elizabeth II National Trust, Ruamahanga Restoration Trust, and Greater Wellington Regional Council to restore and protect the Taumata Oxbow’s biodiversity value and wetland function.

As Trevor tears away the invasive weeds and makes a new line on which we are to plant the young seedlings, we slowly make our way, spade and plants in hand, to dig holes into the soft wet earth, dwarfed by the trunks of towering kahikatea behind us.  

As each young plant goes in, it makes you reflect on the passage of time and how it’s not only rivers that change course and direction, but us humans too. If we can make a difference by planting more trees, we can certainly contribute something positive to the future direction of our environment and subsequent outcomes, making treasured spots like this even more valuable.

For the past two years, Jane Riddiford has been working together with her two sisters Liz and Lucy and her husband Rod on the Ruamāhanga Mauri Oho project, which is based on the farm beside the Ruamāhanga River. Collectively, they bring a passion for native plant restoration, a commitment to values-based work that brings different parts of the community together, and a recognition of the importance of working with children and young people in ways suited to the uncertainties of our times.  

As Jane gave us a tour of the property she explained her vision for the wetland and riparian forest restoration project. It soon became very clear that our goals are very much aligned.

Later, as we sat drinking tea and eating homemade cake beneath an ancient stand of tī kōuka cabbage trees, I asked Jane to elaborate on her plans for restoring parts of the farm and developing educational activities for local schools and the wider community.

Campbell: What’s your vision for the Ruamāhanga Mauri oho project?

“For me, vision is something that I can’t already see, rather it is what grows in the footsteps of shared commitment. Coming together with my two sisters Liz and Lucy, and my husband Rod in the belief that we could do something different with our family farm was the starting point, and making space to find out what might emerge between us over time is at the heart of the work.  For us, this means not only working together as a family but also creating opportunities for others to come and join us.

Mauri oho is a working title name, gifted to us by Ra Smith who is the Kaumatua for the Ruamāhanga river. The name which means awakening the life force is guiding our actions, our way of working and our aspirations. We hope our contribution here will demonstrate ways in which the local community, including the tangata whenua, can work together in the restoration of wetlands and riparian forest. In this way, we believe we will support the health of both the planet and people. We sometimes refer to the three interwoven dimensions of the work as; ‘I, We, and the Planet.’

Campbell:  What made you realise that there was a need for this?

“I lived in London for 25 years and on visits back to New Zealand I began to feel more acutely a sense of sadness in the land, particularly in the wetland parts of the farm. I thought about how the oxbow of the river was at that point little more than a ditch and how it would have once been a thriving wetland. Along with my sister Liz, I began to pay attention to the few remaining native trees. They seemed like sentinels providing glimpses of how the land once was and how it might again be. Meanwhile back in London, thanks to our work with environmental education charity Global Generation. Rod and I knew that working with nature could provide a healthy foundation for growing community amongst people of all ages and circumstances. During that time, I was also finding my way with breast cancer. Connecting to the wider body of land has been an important part of my own healing journey. I wanted to learn more and also give others the opportunity to listen to what the land might have to say.

When Rod, Liz, and Lucy became excited about taking these ideas forward, I knew that between us, we could make something positive happen.”

Campbell: What do you see as some of the most pressing environmental issues that we and the river catchment itself is now faced with?

“There’s a pressing need to learn more about how rivers want to be. This calls on us to shift our perception that rivers should be neat fast flowing channels engineered primarily to suit the demands of our industrialised world. I think we have to do whatever it takes to enable rivers to become wider rather than forcing them to become deeper.

On so many levels, both practical and philosophical we need to prepare ourselves for the uncertainties that lie ahead. We are so often predicated towards control, but it seems to me we have to learn how to be more comfortable with not already knowing what the best way forward is. It’s an often-confusing picture, as there are huge issues that do need controlling like the increase of possums and other native plant predators in the valley.

I feel that the polarisation between people who have different experiences and different and sometimes divisive views is an environmental issue. Collaboration is key to unearthing the kind of creative response that is needed for the challenges that lie ahead. This is why I think it is vitally important to support children and young people to become not only familiar with the natural world but also empathetic listeners and critical thinkers.”

Campbell:  What are the next steps for your project and what level of support do you need to help make it happen?

“Over the coming year, we will establish Ruamahānga Mauri Oho as a charity. We are on a journey with the name, and it may change. Our monthly planting sessions to revegetate the wetland and riparian areas of the farm will continue with the valued help of our expanding core of local volunteers.

We will continue to develop our Nature Restoration walks. These are an expanded version of some of the storytelling and qigong-based activities we already ‘bookend’ with the practical work of our volunteer sessions.

We are collaborating with Enviroschools and the Ruamāhanga Restoration Trust in a range of activities, and to that end we are developing the basic infrastructure to enable us to host groups, including overnight. These include the Little Green Dunny we have just installed by the river and a Gathering Shelter. Of great importance to the project, we recognise and respect the scientific and other knowledge of the river and land that tangata whenua holds. As our connections and trust builds, we hope to strengthen the initial links we have made.

“Building on our initial self-funded planting efforts over the past year we’ve already successfully raised a total of $15,000 from Trees that Count and GWRC. We recently held a family and community event which raised a total of $3000. Over the next three years our plans include raising around $120,000 for a combination of planting, plant protection, and education and community-based workshops.”

Then, with one wave of the hand, everything in that split-second moment seemed possible. After all, helping to restore the health of the Ruamahanga River is a collective action that requires the support of landowners and a greater understanding of Nature amongst our youth and future decision-makers. Seconds become lifetimes.

It was for this reason that the Ruamāhanga Restoration Trust agreed to support the Ruamāhanga Mauri Oho project and help Jane and Rod (and their family and volunteer community) with the restoration work and hosting of school and community groups at this magical site.

What's the role of the House of Science here in the Wairarapa?

We are a community-led provider of science education services. We provide quality hands-on bilingual (Te Reo Māori and English) science kits covering a range of topics and teacher professional learning and development to primary and intermediate schools in the Wairarapa. We manage and maintain these science kits for the schools allowing them to provide their students with an immersive science class experience.

How many science kits do you have and what's the role of the Water Analysis Kit?

House of Science Wairarapa currently has a library that contains 56 science kits that cover 35 different science themes from the Water Analysis kit to Flexi Physics, Measurement Matter, Spaced Out, and A Load of Rubbish to name a few. New science kits are developed every year and we look for funding to be able to add these to our science library. The Water Analysis kit was developed to allow students to investigate and understand that a variety of factors affect the health of a stream/waterway through on-site hands-on learning.

What are some of the key features of the Water Analysis kit?

The Water Analysis lets schools investigate the health of their local waterway. Many schools in the Wairarapa have a body of water nearby and this kit provides all the equipment needed to test water quality from pH, turbidity, nitrate, and flow, to invertebrate (insect) guides and their use as ecological indicators of environmental health.

How and where are the kits being used? What is the level of demand for them here in the Wairarapa?

House of Science Wairarapa was started in 2019 and fast forward a few years House of Science Wairarapa now operates a library of 56 science kits with 35 different topics for 27 schools in the Wairarapa from Mauriceville down to Pirinoa. These include primary schools, intermediate schools, colleges that start at year 7, and a supported learning centre. In 2022, a science kit was at a Wairarapa school 395 times, an average of 21 science kits each fortnight. In 2022, we also expanded to include schools from the Tararua District.

How does this help the schools and teachers, over and above what they can provide themselves?

Science is not directly funded in primary schools and many schools lack the resources, and the teachers confidence, to teach science. The science kits all align with the NZ education curriculum and aim to foster student engagement and understanding, and teacher confidence to teach science. Guided by their students’ interests, teachers order a bilingual science kit which is then delivered to their school by volunteers. Science is a resource-heavy subject and our science kits contain 5-8 hands-on experiments for Year 1-8 students with everything a teacher needs to deliver an engaging science lesson included in the kits, including consumables for 30 students and bilingual student and teacher instructions. Once the science kit is returned to us, our volunteers clean and re-stock the science kit with all the consumables required for the activities before the science kit heads back out to another school.

What are some of the key takeaways for the students themselves? What do they learn from using these kits?

The nature of the experiments in our science kits allows for hands-on learning which all students can enjoy, regardless of their learning style. Our science kits harness the natural curiosity of children, encouraging them to experiment and use their own observations to develop ideas and assumptions. It’s important that all students can access our science kits no matter their learning environment or where they live.

How important is it to have funding support for these science kits?

Science builds key skills such as critical thinking, questioning, and problem-solving. Providing hands-on learning that uses children’s natural curiosity helps to demystify science and encourages more children to participate in science-based courses throughout their schooling.  Research has shown that by the age of 10, students have decided what career they will not pursue when they leave school (ASPIRES project, UCL, UK) so starting young is essential. In 2017, the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement found that only 20% of students in Year 8 were achieving at or above science curriculum expectations. In the recent TIMSS, the science scores for both Year 5 and Year 9 New Zealand students fell from the last time the test was conducted in 2014/15. New Zealand’s Education Review Office also concluded in 2012 that most primary and intermediate schools did not have a satisfactory science programme in place. House of Science Wairarapa helps address this issue by providing teachers with the knowledge, skills, and resources to teach science. As everything is provided in the science kit, the teacher doesn’t need specialised knowledge, to research the topic, or to purchase any equipment.

As soon as we arrived, Ray had his gumboots on and was leading us along a narrow muddy track down from the house and into the forest remnant nestled beside the river. Raindrops fell from the tree canopy with a random pitter-patter sound as they landed on our raincoats.

Ray had purchased the land some 28 years ago and soon realised even back then that he had something unique in the Wairarapa. The property, which is quite close to the Morison Bush Reserve, included a riparian bush remnant that contained many diverse species including kahikatea, tōtara, tītoki, kānuka, kowhai, matai, tī kōuka, tarata, horoeka, kawakawa, and many other smaller trees and shrubs. Ray then placed a QEII covenant on the forest remnant section soon after settling in.

Around that time, the Greater Wellington Regional Council undertook a plant survey and described it as one of the most diverse riparian forest remnants remaining on the Ruamahanga. Since then, Ray has kept the stock out and undertaken significant underplanting.

“We wanted to restore it to its natural state,” he told us as we followed him down the track that cut along the steep river terrace beneath the trees.

We trudged through mud and brushed aside the wet undergrowth before finally emerging into a heavily grassed area where we stopped, not too far from the river’s edge. The Ruamahanga was in flood and the muddy brown water surged past in a swirling hurry.

“Being on the river, sometimes it goes under water”, he says, gazing out across the river, “but it seems to recover well – and that’s a testament to the adaptation and resilience of the ecosystem.”

Ray’s QEII covenant has been a labour of love for several decades and it’s still growing strong. The passion and commitment are evident in his eyes – the way he looks around at what he started two decades ago, reflecting on the past, present, and future.

“We’re acutely aware of the need for big changes in the way we farm our land,” he says, looking around. “Being absent for much of the year we were unable to introduce regenerative farming practices so we focused on the two ecosystems we could have the most impact on – the bush remnant and the ephemeral wetland. We believe both of these projects can have an influence on other landowners around us.”

We walked a bit further on and gazed out across a paddock that he hopes to convert into another restoration block before making our way back through the bush remnant. He tells us that it bares little resemblance to what it was when he first purchased the land.

“It was under grazed by stock, so there was no real understory, and it was largely older trees that were in decline. Now there is a strong understory forming but it requires plenty of effort to keep weed species such as blackberry, tradescantia, and old man’s beard under control. A bonus for our effort is the increase in the native bird population.”

Ray points out a grassed area where he plans to put the plants donated by the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust. We ask if the seedlings are likely to be washed away in a large flood. Ray has seen three very large floods and knows the risks.

He is about to start a wetland restoration project on the land downriver from the covenant but knows it will be challenging, especially given the likelihood and increase in major flooding due to climate change.

Ray’s hope is to see the two ecosystems as capable of aligning as a showcase for what this restored riverside area can be, as a showcase for others to follow.

After some thought, Ray says he might plant our seedlings on slightly higher ground. He admits that it would be a shame to see our first gift of trees washed away in one mighty sweep of the Ruamahanga.

As with many other landowners along the Ruamahanga River, Ray Labone’s ideas and his passion for conservation and restoration give us the confidence that what we’re doing is right, not just for land and the river, but for the wider community and future generations.

“We believe that a riparian strip of bush and wetland can play a crucial role in the rehabilitation of our river ecosystem. We see us being part of a growing  movement of landowners who are adopting a kaitiaki approach to these precious areas of land and who can help raise awareness and model good restoration practices.”

At that moment, the rain stopped and the river appeared to slow down.

It’s apparent that we made a special connection, and in that one moment, the reason why we are doing this made sense not only to us but more importantly to the river.

The effects of climate change are well known and reported. Flood events and droughts are likely to get worse. Land management choices are already becoming increasingly critical as climate change heats up, bringing with it more frequent extreme weather.

In August 2018 the Ruamāhanga Whaitua Committee produced its final report, the Ruamāhanga Whaitua Implementation Programme (WIP). The report was the result of four years work and consultation with communities, both urban and rural, throughout the Wairarapa. As a member of the committee I learnt that there are nature-based solutions that will reduce flood peaks and also help provide water resilience in times of drought.

Historically, we removed forest cover and drained wetlands to make room for pasture. Unfortunately, one of the effects of doing this has been to make the water move faster through the catchment, resulting in higher flood peaks.

If removing forest cover is one of the main reasons behind our water woes, then planting trees is the most obvious solution. Farmers have been doing this since the devastating winter of 1977 when there was widespread erosion in the hill country. Since 2009, the Wellington Regional Erosion Control Initiative (WRECI) has provided assistance to farmers for planting willows and poplars. More recently, our attention has been drawn to the practice of planting trees in order to capture carbon, but trees can provide many other benefits in terms of ecosystem services (benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and from healthy ecosystems) e.g. improved water quality and oxygenation, lower water temperatures and habitat restoration.

Nature-based solutions are well proven. The town of Pickering, North Yorkshire, England has explored a new approach to flood management called Slowing the flow at Pickering. They reduced the yearly risk of flooding from 25% to 4% through construction of detainment bunds and leaky dams. Farm scale measures also included sediment ponds, swales and check dams, cross drains on tracks and small scale storage. Here in New Zealand, the Phosphorus Mitigation Project has run trials in Rotorua using detainment bunds to remove phosphorus and sediment from runoff on farms. These bunds will also slow water down and moderate peak flows. In urban environments stormwater can be slowed down with permeable pavements, bioswales, rain gardens and constructed wetlands. These can also filter and clean the water so that it can be stored and utilised as a resource. In China, the sponge cities initiative aims to make urban regions better able to absorb rainfall and release it when needed.

The Wairarapa Water Resilience Strategy was published last year and it made a distinction between green and grey projects. The claim was made that grey solutions are faster than green to be effective. However, many solutions are a blend of green and grey – it’s not useful to make a binary distinction. Trees are slow to grow, but swales and leaky dams are much faster to get going. We urgently need to trial and test solutions which work with nature and give us more bang for our buck. We need to be better prepared for the next wet winter.

This story was originally published in the Wairarapa Times Age on 11 August 2022.

“Toitū te marae ō Tāne, Toitū te marae o Tangaroa, Toitū te tangata.”

This whakatauki [proverb], which translates as “if the forest and the ocean are strong, so too are the people”, will be emblazoned on the base of the new Ruamahanga Restoration Trust Conservation Award for Environmental Leadership trophy - soon to be gifted to Wairarapa schools to present at their annual prize giving. 

The award is the creation of the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust: formed in 2019 by a collective of Rathkeale College old boys to support schools and communities across the Ruamahanga River catchment with environmental restoration projects.

The Trust’s signature project is its Schools Behind Our River programme, designed to empower rangatahi [youth people] to become caretakers of their environment through hands-on learning experiences: from riparian planting, to monitoring water quality using DNA testing, to establishing their own pockets of native bush and regenerating wetland spaces.

Twenty schools are currently involved with Schools Behind Our River - with the Trust raising $160,000 over the last three years towards resources, field trips, and planting events. 

The Conservation Award for Environmental Leadership will be given to each of the schools to present to a student who “demonstrates principles of kaitiakitanga [guardianship] of their environment and demonstrates leadership skills in environmental conservation, restoration, or innovation within their school and community”.

The Trust commissioned Masterton ceramics artist Sam Ludden, himself a staunch environmental advocate, to make each of the 20 trophies: which features a sculpted kokopu - a galaxiid fish once plentiful in Wairarapa - as the centrepiece.

With guidance from local iwi and mana whenua, Ludden also chose the whakatauki - which reflects the role rangatahi can play in safeguarding Wairarapa’s waterways, biodiversity, and natural heritage.

Trust co-founder Campbell McLean said the award helped cement environmental protection within the school curriculum in Wairarapa - and hoped it would inspire more students to “get involved and make a difference”.

“Young people are the future stewards of our land --- we need to engage them while they’re young so we can pass the baton to the next generation,” McLean said.

“We can see that young people are actually very concerned about what they’re seeing on the news. They’re concerned about things like climate change, rising sea levels, carbon emissions and the loss of biodiversity. 

“They have a greater awareness of these issues -- and it’s been really cool to see them and their teachers channel that into positive actions. 

“This award creates more incentive for young people to spend time outdoors, connect with nature, and find help find real-world solutions.”

McLean said the idea for the Trust arose from a conversation he had with fellow Rathkeale alumnus Chris Morrison while hiking through the Fiordland National Park - where they wondered what they could do to protect “the wellbeing of New Zealand’s indigenous flora and fauna for future generations”.

They decided to “start small” and focus on an area dear to their heart: the Ruamahanga River, which had been “a huge part of life” at Rathkeale.

In 2019, alongside a group of other Rathkeale old boys, the two friends set up the Trust and began work on Schools Behind Our River, first engaging with Rathkeale and Opaki Schools.

The programme continued to grow and, with support from funders Masterton Trust House, Eastern & Central Community Trust, and the One Foundation, the Trust provided schools with “thousands of native seedlings”, HoS water analysis kits, and eDNA multispecies test kits, and tracking and trapping equipment to assist with predator control.

“There are a lot of teachers who are passionate about this work -- but haven’t had access to the materials,” McLean said.

“During covid, so many extra resources are going towards relief teaching and remote learning, teachers don’t have extra funds for plants and science kits.

“So, we can help relieve that burden, and make sure teachers have that support.”

The Trust is also assisting schools with significant projects to help restore wetlands and native forests: for example, Rathkeale students are restoring two disused sewage-treatment ponds adjacent to the school’s Eco-Trail site.

Native planting around the ponds will help create a habitat for native birds and tributaries for marine life, such as tuna kuwharuwharu [long fin eel] and mudfish.

The Trust looked forward to the completion of the Ruamahanga Environmental Award - which can acknowledge a student’s work and service in media communications, data collection, trapping, planting, or volunteering work.

Ludden said the kokopu as the centrepiece was particularly significant - as the fish has “many special characteristics”, including serving as an indicator of stream health.

“If we’re not finding these native species in our waterways, we need to ask ‘why?’ And ‘what can we do about it?’” he said.

“Our long-term aim is to see these taonga return to where they should be.”

First published in Wairarapa Midweek, 20 July 2022

By Erin Kavanagh-Hall, erin.kavanagh-hall@age.co.nz

Events are taking place across the Wairarapa including a field trip on the Waipoua River in Masterton this weekend. On Saturday 28 May there will be a webinar and two field trips in Pirinoa and Wairarapa Moana. Tessa Bunny, the event manager, approached me about having a field trip at our farm at Taueru in April. We agreed to host the day with the theme  “Rural Restoration – on farm native planting, wetland restoration and thinking of the wider catchment”.

We had a beautiful day and after an unusually wet February and March the farm was looking a picture. About twenty of us spent the afternoon on a walk to see three wetlands in varying stages of restoration. Initially we had planned to drive some of the route, but walking gave us more opportunity to socialise and chat. We discussed a range of topics including land use, restoration and poplar and willow planting for erosion control.

The first site we looked at was fenced off about three years ago with some native planting alongside regenerating kanuka. The second site has been fenced off recently and seven hundred native plants will go in this winter. The last site we visited was the largest (about three hectares) and most of it has been fenced off for more than ten years. We are lucky that we don’t have too many pest plants and have only had to remove the odd willow.  When retiring land, stock management and contour dictate where the fence lines will need to go and sometimes small areas of drier terrain are included. We have chosen to plant small woodlots (redwoods or eucalypts) in these areas. Nigel Fleming, the farm manager, spoke of how fencing off wetlands can provide benefits for the farm by reducing stock losses from sheep getting stuck in boggy ground during dry summers.

It's not so long ago that wetlands were being drained, and in the Wairarapa we've lost about ninety seven per cent of wetlands. The remaining three percent of wetlands continue to be under pressure from the impacts of land use and plant and animal pests.

Wetlands are really good at filtering out contaminants, pollutants and fertilisers so excess nutrients can get soaked up and recycled. Plants like raupo and manuka are good at improving water quality. They provide habitat for threatened and at-risk species including eels and mudfish. There can be a benefit for biodiversity. The organic matter that plants like raupo produce encourages large populations of aquatic invertebrates including insects, watersnails, crustaceans and worms, and vertebrates like frogs and birds.

Wetlands are a key component for water resilience. Wetlands act like a giant sponge and serve to slow water down as it moves through a catchment. Wetlands can “flatten the curve” for water flow by reducing the peak flow rate during a flood. As the flood event recedes the wetland will gradually release the stored water, which means that the catchment downstream won’t dry out as fast. Providing water resilience through methods like this, which work with nature rather than against it, will be essential if we are going to adapt to climate change. Richard Parkes (from Wairarapa Pūkaha to Kawakawa Alliance) talked about how countries in Europe are moving to nature-based methods for flood control.

Local farmer Murray Tomlin shared a fascinating description of what the Taueru district was like when heavily forested in the 19th century. There was a day that the Taueru school had to close because the birdsong was so loud. We finished with more sharing of ideas and experiences over a cuppa back at the woolshed. I’m looking forward more Restoration Day events – take a look at the Greater Wellington website to find out more.

https://www.gw.govt.nz/your-region/events-and-meetings/restoration-day-2022-kia-whakanuia-te-taiao/

This story was originally published in the Wairarapa Times Age on 19 May 2022

QEII Regional Rep for the Wellington Region, Trevor Thompson, who helped advise on the planting and supervise the activity, described the site on the upper reaches of the Ruamahanga River as, “high-quality forest, likely the best I know of in the Wairarapa.”

According to Trevor, patches of barberry and hawthorn had to be dealt with first using a modest amount of ecological weed control. Blackberry and rank grass was spot sprayed along with edges of tradescantia to stop further encroachment.

All this was done prior to planting good-sized Lowland Ribbonwood (plagianthus pegious, also known by its Māori name, Manatu), and Hohere (poheria populnea, also known by its European name, Lace Bark).

The young planting volunteers used sheep dags from the local shearing shed, which are great for putting around the plantings to suppress grass and repel rabbits.

‘Schools Behind Our River’ field trips and restoration planting activities like this are made possible thanks to additional funding support from Masterton Trust House, One Foundation, ECCT, the Lion Foundation, and several private donors.

The Ruamahanga Restoration Trust sees this as a multigenerational initiative to support landowners like Mike Wyeth to restore and protect pockets of native bush, which in combination with other properties can act as a necklace of biodiversity corridors from the Tararua Ranges downstream to Lake Ferry on the Palliser coast.

By engaging students at this age, the trust hopes the young conservationists will continue their enthusiasm for respecting nature and protecting the local environment throughout their school years and beyond.

Special thanks to the teaching staff and students of Opaki School who supported this planting initiative, some of whom are seen here taking a well-deserved break.

The mission is to provide schools and rural community groups with restoration projects and educational activities that support conservation and environmental heritage. This includes restoring and regenerating wetlands and pockets of native bush along the length and breadth of Ruamahanga River and its tributaries, ensuring access to clean water, protecting native fish species, and creating biodiversity corridors from Mt Bruce Pūkaha down to Rathkeale and onwards as far as Kawakawa Palliser Bay.

The trust’s signature project ‘Schools Behind Our River’ delivers hands-on outdoor learning opportunities for school students to embrace environmental conservation projects that connect local communities with the health of the river catchment, protecting and restoring biodiverse habitats and environmental heritage.  One of their goals is to help secondary students think about how the environment can inspire their interest in science, statistics, conservation, farming, technology, or media communications, which in turn will either inspire career paths, an innovative idea, or a sustainable business model that supports local businesses and farming communities.

The trust has been using all of its available funds to support the purchase of wildlife monitoring equipment, predator traps, native seedlings, school field trips, water analysis tests for House of Science Wairarapa, multi-species eDNA testing kits from WilderLab, and packaging their own educational tracking and trapping predator kits exclusively for use by local schools in collaboration with Pukaha Wildlife Centre and EnviroSchools Wairarapa. As such, the Trust’s funding activities are designed to engage a range of student interests from trapping to data collection and analysis, to storytelling and media content production.

The trust has also conducted several restorations plantings at Rathkeale College planting as many as three thousand native seedlings in and around sites on the Eco-Trail that winds its way through remnants of an ancient podocarp forest and wetland areas adjacent to the Ruamahanga. A project scheduled for Queen’s Birthday Weekend in June 2022 will have a community working-bee group help plant 1800 carex secta, cyperus ustelatus, and phormium tenax flax plants around the edge of the school’s two sewage settling ponds, converting them from a wasteland into a biodiverse habitat.  The hope is to restore the ground cover around the ponds, encouraging native vegetation without compromising the structure and stability of the pond-wall structure. Hopefully, this will help the wasteland area recover to the point that it can serve as a sanctuary for aquatic birdlife with places for nesting and sufficient cover for small indigenous fish species to breed among the grasses along the water's edge.  The planting of the ponds will coincide with a wildlife monitoring activity to help measure the presence of indigenous birdlife, predators, and native fish species in and around the wetland area adjoining the ponds. This will include the use of the eDNA multispecies tests from WilderLab to determine the presence of various flora and fauna.

Trustee Campbell McLean hopes to make the pond planting activity a local community-based event that students also feel motivated to join. “The last thing we want to do is make the students feel coerced into these activities. They should want to be involved and engaged, and hopefully, they’ll see and appreciate the results during their time at the school and beyond.”

Another project that the Trust has its sights on is to create pockets of biodiversity corridors running from Mt Bruce Pukaha on the upper reaches of the Ruamahanga River all the way down towards Rathkeale. “It’s a long-term vision,” said Campbell, “to get the support of the Greater Wellington Council and rural landowners along the river between the bridge at Mt Bruce and Opaki, to help fence-off pockets of regenerating bush and create safe flight paths all the way to Rathkeale where there’s an abundance of trees and a good food supply for birds.”

Campbell is also keen to attract people. “We need support from the wider community as sponsors, volunteers, donors, philanthropists, and contributors of any kind, which also means welcoming school leavers into our network. This is a multi-generational activity. Age, ethnicity, or occupation, does not define us in this task. We have something unique here and it’s worth putting time and effort into for future generations, long after we have gone.”

In this respect, our goals are multi-generational, nurturing the growth and participation of young environmentalists, future scientists, and farmers from one generation to another engaging in a lifetime of conservation work – implementing sustainable environmentally-friendly farming practices and supporting biodiversity corridors across the Ruamahanga catchment.

‘Schools Behind Our River’ supports schools and rural community groups by creating restoration projects and educational activities around conservation and environmental heritage. One of our goals is to help restore and regenerate streams, wetlands, and pockets of native bush along the length and breadth of Ruamahanga river and its many tributaries, which in turn will help protect native flora and fauna within biodiversity corridors downriver from Mt Bruce Pūkaha to Kawakawa Palliser Bay.

For our part, the trust contributes and coordinates volunteer manpower, equipment resources, and product support to schools with classrooms willing to get involved with restoration plantings, field trips, and scientific research. We also support and engage local contractors and environmental consultants who advise us on flora and fauna, predator trapping, restoration planting sites, and early Māori history.

Overall, our scope of work is aimed at benefiting everyone across the Wairarapa district – tackling climate change and embracing the health of our waterways, forests, wetlands, farms, and communities for the benefit of future generations, which makes us grateful for the financial support of sponsors and community donors, like Trust House.

With the help of several teachers, Sam led a group of year 8 & 9 students from Kura Kaupapa o Wairarapa and Mākoura College on a river walk along the upper reaches of the Ruamahanga River. The trip was a highlight of the year for the Mokomoko program and turned out to be a real treat for the students, many of whom took advantage of the warmer weather to swim in the river.

Sam’s idea was to allow the students to explore and experience a beautiful section of the Ruamahanga. The walk included an informal korero and some storytelling to share knowledge and history about this pristine section of our river. The trip was created as a pilot with an idea to continue trips like these for a wider group of students and adults in the years to come.

Vicky Pilling, an Outdoor Education teacher at Mākoura who accompanied the students, said the trip provided “huge value” by giving the students a special “awareness of their local environment and what the river’s really about, not just what they see in the town, but where the rivers come from.”

Vicky acknowledged that it’s important to see and experience the river in its natural state, and by doing so she said that it encourages students to take more of an interest and “hopefully develop a love for our environment and a desire to preserve it.”

“For the students to have the element of fun and adventure is really important. It hooks them in but it’s also a tool to allow us to teach them an appreciation of the environment and the preciousness of the resources," she said.

For Wake Mathews, it was his first time on this stretch of the Ruamahanga. Wake works as a year 7-8 kaiako at Kura Kauapa o Wairarapa and jumped at the opportunity to join the field trip.

“The students reconnected with the awa, the river itself,” he told us afterward. “Some of them are descendants of the people with the original connection, and so you can’t put a price on that, and they’re the ones that need to take care of it next, so it's giving them a feeling of responsibility as well.

When the students arrived at the river, Wake led a karakia with everyone standing together knee-deep in the water. “A waiata clears and prepares the way with water, the water carries the spirituality, letting the water know that we’re here.”  For Wake and his students, it would turn out to be a day that he would never forget.

“It was a beautiful experience in every aspect, physically, spiritually, and mentally. If the students didn’t have that relationship, why would they care about it? It’s one thing talking about the river at home, or at the marae, but being there, being immersed in it, that’s where the real connection is.”

Also on the trip was retired Wairarapa archivist and local river expert, Gareth Winter. Gareth knows the river like the back of his hand and was more than happy to share some of his knowledge about the Ruamahanga and its history.

David Woodcock of Wairarapa Outdoor Pursuits was also on hand to provide water safety instruction along with wetsuits for those less confident about braving the cold water.

Campbell McLean from the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust demonstrated the use of a mini eDNA testing kit from Wilderlab in Wellington. The kits analyse the presence of flora and fauna, thereby helping to determine what's present upstream and whether or not rare or endangered species exist in the area. The results are recorded and publicly available on an interactive map, complete with GPS coordinates of where the sample has been taken. It's McLean's long-term vision to help create bird corridors along the entire length of the Ruamahanga, from the Tararua ranges onwards to Palliser Bay.

Year 9 Mākoura College teacher Desiree Pearse described the Ruamahanga River field trip as “absolutely amazing.”

“Having the connections with the stories, especially having experts in the field, is something different from what the students know, and getting them out of the classroom and into nature, that’s the biggest learning anyone can have. But today, especially with our students, they’ve learned about themselves, when some thought they couldn’t do it, like walk down the river, but now they’ve done it – and that, for us, is incredibly empowering,” she said.

“A lot of teachers know how meaningful hands-on learning experiences are to the students, but it’s around their time, so to have resources available for teachers to make those connections and then be able to implement that with their students is a huge, huge help, because teachers don’t necessarily have the time or the know-how to connect with certain groups.”

For Sam, it wasn’t just about discovering a new part of their river, “it was almost like a reset of their own wairua and their own spirits.”

“It's having consistency of relationships – if you include rangitahi from the beginning, you are there for them, they’ll be there for you, and you just normalise river life and make it cultural rather than instructional, and lots of time on the river is the best way to guide any programme.”

“Today’s river trip was a chance to create memories that the rangatahi will treasure for life and perhaps guide their future career decisions,” said Sam.

The Macarthy Trust funds will be used to purchase a complete set of five tracking and trapping predator kits, to be distributed to schools within the Wairarapapa in the first term of the new school year in 2021. The project is a collaborative partnership with Wairarapa EnviroSchools and the Pūkaha National Wildlife Centre.

Already this year, three trapping and tracking kits have been delivered to schools in the hope of creating awareness around predators such as rats and encouraging sustainable practices. Solway College, Mauriceville School, and Kahutara School have each received their kits and induction workshop training. Students are generally most excited by the tracks recorded on the Gotcha pre-inked tunnel cards and by the photos captured on the trail cameras. Data collected from the schools will be used to monitor progress and results within their school districts and river zones over time.

The TG Macarthy Trust is managed by Public Trust. The Ruamahanga Restoration Trust would like to acknowledge all contributors to this project activity, including Masterton Trust House, Eastern & Central Community Trust, One Foundation, and two private donors Michael Bruce-Smith and Bruce Logan.

Spring was in the air when twenty boys from Rathkeale College Year 10 Ag class, along with Bailey Parker undertaking his Duke of Ed service, and teachers Ben Arcus and Liz Evans, all chipped in to plant some 1200 manuka plugs alongside the Kiriwhakapa Steam at Matt and Lynley Wyeth’s Ratanui Farm.

The Ruamahanga Restoration Trust donated the manuka plugs in an effort to help students understand the need and reasons for rural property owners to protect and restore their waterways and riparian margins.

The Wyeths have been doing this for a long time and have even made national headlines for their efforts. Their Spring Valley Enterprises restoration plan encompasses an ambitious eco-corridor project that has fenced off 8.5km of the Kiriwhakapa Steam on their 2100 hectare farm close to the foothills of the Tararua Ranges, northwest of Masterton. The family has already planted some 25,000 native trees, shrubs, flax, grasses, and sedges along their newly fenced rivers, and clearly love what they do and take pride in doing it.

Following planting and safety instructions from Lynley Wyeth and Michael Birch, the students lept in and did an amazing job planting 1200 manuka plugs over a two-hour period. Thanks to recent rains, the ground was already wet and covered with a thick layer of buttercup and clover, and therefore suitably prepared to accept our gift of manuka.

The Wyeth’s restoration project is an excellent example of how rural property owners across New Zealand are contributing to environmental protection by fencing stock off the waterways and creating eco-corridors of native plants that will in turn provide shade for the streams and healthier habitats for fish and native birds.

As a registered charity, the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust supports local schools and rural community groups within the Wairarapa, creating restoration projects and educational activities around conservation and environmental heritage. Our goal is to help restore and regenerate streams, wetlands, and pockets of native bush along the length and breadth of Ruamahanga River and its many tributaries, which in turn will help protect native fish species and create bird corridors from Mt Bruce Pūkaha Reserve all the way to Kawakawa Palliser Bay.

For us, this means starting with our Schools Behind Our River project to deliver hands-on learning opportunities for school students to embrace environmental conservation projects that connect local communities with the health of their river catchment, Māori heritage, and sustainable biodiversity goals.

Schools Behind Our River is funded with assistance from One Foundation Limited, Trust House, and Eastern & Central Community Trust

Earth School co-founder and project coordinator, Emilie Neubauer, arranged for students from South End Primary to mulch and plant the site during school hours with assistance from community volunteers. Emilie also has plans to convert the old sports playing field at the school into a forested area for nature-based learning and recreation.

“Students have made plans to reforest parts of the school playing field. They came up with plans for an ‘education outside the classroom’ wilderness area that showcases native bush and provides shade and shelter for outdoor play and learning. In the plans, there is a forest school-style camping and fire pit area, a flying fox, and a cross-country running track, all within native bush plantings.”

In order to help with the ambitious plans, the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust sought advice from QEII Regional Representative, Trevor Thompson, who on seeing the site suggested a choice of plants that included a row of coastal flax, koromiko, and every now and then a coprosma propinqua, planted at 1m spacing along the fence-line, with tree lucerne 2m out from the fenceline plantings, at 2.5m spacings.

“I’d then look at another row of tree lucerne,” he told us, “a further 2.5 m out and staggered spacing, and within this quick-growing tree lucerne would be planted our local hoheria sextylosa- lacebark, manatu, ribbon wood, kowhai microphylla, totara, matai, hinau, and black maire.”

Trevor thinks there is plenty of space on the site for a mix of native plants.

“The understorey would be planted as a second or third stage according to how much gets done,” he added, “but it’s better to get the new fence line and tree lucerne in, before planting the big natives.”

Emilie sees this as playing an important role in the students’ education. “Outdoor learning provides enhanced learning outcomes,” she told us during a site visit, adding that hands-on experiential learning “connects book-learning to real life, enabling learners to see the need for maths by looking at measuring and mapping, for example.” 

“We use our teaching gardens to enhance learning outcomes, and also to invite students and learners of all ages from all over the Wairarapa to learn and connect with Papatūānuku and each other. Native bush provides shelter and learning opportunities such as matauranga maori - discovering rongoā - the study of native medicinal plants, wild edible foraging and weaving,” she said.

The Ruamahanga Restoration Trust is proud to support and nurture nature at this level and plans to continue planting natives in the school field, and looks forward to watching students and young trees grow side-by-side.

Besides planting some manuka plugs and root trainers, the students also had a chance to connect with the tuna (eels) and wai (water) as kaitiaki (guardians of their environment).

This is what matters –– engaging and inspiring our rangatahi (young generation) to connect with te taiao (the natural world) that surrounds us. As for those eels, no one really wants to catch them anymore because they have become so precious, with some living up to 100 years. 

This was our first collaboration with Mokomoko and we look forward to providing further support in the form of field trips and more planting activities.
 

The Mokomoko Project is a Community Collaboration Education Model Project where schools are supported with their conservation, environmental, sustainability programmes. Mokomoko is a Matuaranga Māori inspired environmental education programme initially led by local educator Jo Potangaroa. In 2021, Sam Ludden took on Joe's position as a part-time educator, alongside his work as an artist and potter. According to Sam, Mokomoko’s kaupapa holds rangatahi at its centre and is based around the Waipoua awa in Whakaoriori/Masterton. "The vision," he said, "is that engagement of young people with our awa/rivers will build skills, knowledge and capacity and bring about intergenerational reconnection with our waterways." 

Mokomoko is the name for the gecko lizard but can also refer to an endemic fish found in larger, braided, gravel, open rivers of the North and South Islands. Solitary and secretive, the mokomoko fish species can still be found in the Waipoua River.

The Ruamahanga Restoration would like to acknowledge Masterton Trust House, Eastern & Central Community Trust, and One Foundation for their support of the Schools Behind Our River project.

Packaged with school curriculum activities in mind, each kit includes an infrared trail camera complete with SD cards to record and photograph the activities of wildlife predators – such as stoats, rats, possums, hedgehogs, rabbits, and feral cats. The kit also includes D-Rat traps, a DOC200 trap, chew cards, Gotcha tracking tunnels with pre-inked cards, a predator footprint guide, and a copy of New Zealand Natures Heroes by Gillian Candler.

“There’s something in there for every student,” says Campbell McLean, a trustee with the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust. “Some students might be interested in trapping, whereas others will find the monitoring aspect more interesting, using the chew cards and tracking tunnels, collecting and analyzing the data, or using the trail cameras to record and post media stories around their activities.” The end goal is to help local schools help students understand the need for predator control, and to develop greater awareness around conservation, protecting the biodiversity of our natural habitats and environmental heritage.

“For students to have the opportunity to take charge of a trapping project within their own space is so exciting, not just for the prospect of what they might find but also the skills they can learn,” says Kelly Body, Education Director at Pūkaha National Wildlife Centre. “Also, the amount of bird, insect and lizard life that can be found in areas around schools can be pretty remarkable. Connecting students with this not only helps them understand the importance of looking after our different environments, but it also helps out the unique wildlife as well.”

The value of each kit is just under one thousand dollars – paid for by the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust. Each kit will be distributed for free in support of the Trust's environmental education project, 'Schools Behind Our River'. The trustees came up with the idea after working with local predator control expert John Bissell. “John had been volunteering his time introducing trapping techniques and demonstrating the trail cameras to students at Rathkeale College last year,” explains Campbell, who acknowledges John for his great work in the field and fellow trustee Michael Birch for the idea. “Michael suggested we package a list of items together in one box – a complete kit – and distribute them to other schools across the district. Now, everything they need is in that one box, and if the consumables need replacing, then we’ll do that too.”

Campbell then approached Kelly Body at Pūkaha to help support the education side of the idea. Pūkaha then brought in Wairarapa Enviroschools as they had already been collaborating on tracking and trapping workshops with primary schools in the Wairarapa since 2017. Their next workshop is scheduled for Term 4 with schools from South Wairarapa.

“Having all of the equipment needed means that schools can maintain a long-term practice of tracking and trapping,” says Gill Stewart, Wairarapa Enviroschools Community Facilitator. Schools that have been planting trees with funding from the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust will be offered the kits first as part of maintaining the health of the newly planted trees, making sure that predators aren’t undoing all the good work.

The kits will be delivered to schools by Pūkaha and Enviroschools to use for two terms, complete with an induction process and ongoing guidance for students and teachers to support monitoring and sustainable trapping projects in schools and within the local community.

Campbell says the partnership with Pūkaha and Enviroschools Wairarapa makes for the perfect collaboration. “As a relatively new trust, we simply don’t have boots on the ground to connect the schools and educational activities. It’s much more practical to leave that to the experts who do this work on a weekly basis. This way we know the message is being delivered and the students are being engaged.”

A trial of the kits will commence with two or three schools in Term Four this year, with more kit rollouts scheduled to follow from Term One 2023.

Schools located within the Wairarapa District who wish to participate in the Predator Monitoring program are welcome to contact the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust, Gill Stewart, or Kelly Body directly.

The Ruamahanga Restoration Trust would like to thank its donors, in particular, Michael Bruce-Smith for his generous contribution towards the cost of two kits.  Michael was a teacher at Rathkeale College when the trustees attended school in the mid-1970s. He was instrumental in leading the Duke of Edinburgh Award programme, which encouraged students to tackle outdoor challenges, including excursions into the Tararua Ranges – experiences that helped form an early appreciation for our natural environment. 

The Trust would also like to acknowledge Masterton Trust House, One Foundation, and Eastern & Central Community Trust, for helping to fund the 'Schools Behind Our River' project.

The Water Analysis kit has been extremely popular and since it and has been rotated around seven different schools with many of those schools using the kit for more than one week.

By using the Water Analysis science kit, students can determine how healthy their local stream or river is through measuring pH, turbidity, nitrate levels and flow. The kit also includes invertebrate guides and how to use these as ecological indicators of environmental health. In addition, schools classes can choose to monitor streams or rivers over a period of time to assess water quality changes.

Pirinoa School Teacher Nat Lagah led his classroom to their water testing site on Palliser Ridge station where according to Nat the kids had so much fun finding some cool things, “even freshwater crayfish,” he told us.

Nat described how he took the students to a point on the farm overlooking a dry stream where they plan to undertake restoration planting and water testing over the next two years. The school plans to take a photo from this same spot each term, to track the growth and changes to the landscape – not to mention the changes in the kids over time!

"It was awesome seeing the kids apply their science knowledge to a real world situation and they're pumped to track this stuff," said Nat.

The manager of the nearby Palliser Ridge farm helped with the pH testing, explaining what it all means and why clean water is so important to the biodiversity of the area. Nat told us they ended up spending two hours "paddling and fishing and data collecting,” adding that it was a "fantastic opportunity to use this kit on one of the farms, and to benefit one of the farms too. The data we collected will be used for their work as well."

Great field work from all the participating students at Pirinoa School!

The Ruamahanga Restoration Trust looks forward to following the scientific progress at Palliser Ridge and to continue supporting House of Science Wairarapa by encouraging younger generations to develop a genuine interest in science as a means to help solve greater environmental issues affecting our communities and our planet in their not too distant future.

South Featherston School also used the testing kits. In feedback to the House of Science Wairarapa, they said, “the students were completely engaged in all the water analysis activities and had such a rich learning experience. We used the kit to understand more about the stream behind our school and it was amazing to explore and analyse the ecosystem there."

Photos courtesy: Nat Lagah, Pirinoa School, South Wairarapa

Gladstone School was the first primary school to get behind the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust's offer to support local schools with resources for planting activities,  In July, the school community, young and old, came together for a working bee to support the students to maintain and further plant the stream embankment area adjacent to the school. Greater Wellington Regional Council Take Action Biodiversity Fund and the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust provided funding for planting and materials.

Gladstone School Principal Belinda Bunny expressed a “massive thanks to the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust who most generously donated funding to pay for the native trees that were planted at our working bee along the stream embankment and up around the transpiration field in the bike track area. The trust provided over 1,000 native plants that will help to clean up the waterways around our school.”

According to EnviroSchools, the momentum at Gladstone continues as the school now places value on this as part of their local curriculum. “It is a place where students can connect with Papatūānuku and be reminded of appropriate tikanga to use as whānau of the living environment. It provides a way to connect to those who have come before who may have guidance for us in the future.”

Mauriceville School, which has around 16 rural students, is doing great work supporting their local rural community by providing schooling for primary students living in a relatively remote area. These young students are the future backbone of our farming communities, and it was so rewarding to see the excitement and enthusiasm on their faces when presented with an opportunity to plant out an area of their school with native trees.

The Trust has promised to retur to Mauriceville because our trustees noticed several riparian margins along the Kopuaranga River that would benefit nicely from some restoration plantings. The Kopuaranga feeds into the Ruamahanga River just behind Rathkeale College and is a vital tributary with a depth of local history.

Solway Primary School also led an impressive turnout with nine classes getting involved, despite the cold weather. Once again, it was fantastic to see the students enthusiasm under the awesome guidance and care of teacher Steve Hornby who made great efforts to teach each class about the significance of the trees and how to plant them using teamwork.

Wairarapa Earth School in Carterton and Kahutara School in South Wairarapa are both undertaking school plantings as we write, with more planting activities planned this year for Rathkeale College, Opaki Primary, and Mākoura College.

The Schools Behind Our River project would like to acknowledge QEII Regional Rep Trevor Thompson for his on-site advice and selection of locally sourced native seedlings. Trees planted include: Long-Leaved Lanceback, Matai, Totora, Kowhai, Toothed Lancewood, Titoki, Black Maire, and Ribbonwood.

The Ruamahanga Restoration Trust is also grateful for the support from individual donors, our corporate sponsor Gibson Sheat, and for community grant funding support from Trust House, One Foundation and Eastern & Central Community Trust.

Chris co-founded Phoenix Organics and All Good, New Zealand’s first Fair Trade banana business. He then launched Karma Drinks, a Fairtrade and organic range of soft drinks that are now available in more than 20 countries. Alongside the Karma Cola arm of All Good Organics is The Karma Cola Foundation, which donates money from every bottle sold to community and sustainable development projects in developing nations. Chris has promoted Fair Trade throughout local communities in support of Fairtrade New Zealand’s ‘Fairtrade Fortnight’, and by donating drinks and bananas to community groups for events and fundraisers. He currently chairs the Board of Organics Aotearoa New Zealand and is a trustee of the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust, which he co-founded with Campbell McLean in 2018. 

Trustees Campbell McLean and Michael Birch are extremely proud of Chris’s achievement and the kudos that it brings to their community organisation. According to Campbell McLean, Chris has always been a passionate advocate for organics and a healthy way of living. “Even during our school years together, Chris would drag me into health food shops and extoll the virtues of organic produce. He was passionate about it then and he still is today. Since then he has successfully encouraged all of us to think twice about what we eat, how we grow our foods, and how we give back to those communities that deserve it the most.”

A wide variety of native plants were purchased for the restoration work, including carex sedges, swamp maire and kahikatea, all of which are well suited to the wetland forest areas bordering the Ruamahanga River.  This section of lowland podocarp forest was spared from the ravages of fire that swept across the Wairarapa plains in the 1600s.  

The pockets of remaining forest in this small remaining wetland habitat includes ancient kahikatea, matai, and totara.  The springfed streams and high water table are essential to keeping many of these trees alive, which in turn helps ensure the health of an ecosystem that filters fresh water and serves as a home for small native fish, frogs, lizards and birdlife.

One this particular day, students got stuck in, wading knee-deep across muddy streams to remove invasive weeds and dig holes for the plants.

Schools Behind Our River was launched earlier this year as a educational project aimed at encouraging students and local communities within the Wairarapa to support restoration plantings, predator trapping and conservation efforts along the length of the Ruamahanga River, from the mountains to the sea.  The project is supported by the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust with additional funding from Masterton Trust House and the Eastern & Central Community Trust.

The site monitoring project was supervised by John Bissell of Backblocks Environmental Management who provided guidance on use of chew cards, trail cameras and predator traps.

According to the photos, a wide range of predators exist within the area, which we will need to target – including feral cats! This area is also close to a river nesting habitat for extremely rare black billed gulls and is therefore an issue that can’t be ignored.

According to the DOC website, Hedgehogs are proven to be a major predator on eggs of riverbed breeding birds such as banded dotterel and black-fronted tern, and have been known to kill and eat chicks of a variety of ground-nesting birds.

If we want to create bird corridors from Pukaha to Kawakawa then we have to work towards the common goal of a predator Free New Zealand.

Schools Behind Our River has been supported with educational funding grants from Masterton Trust House and Eastern & Central Community Trust.

Results will be revealed after the holidays when students return to see which critters have been chewing the cards and caught on camera. The Trust has sponsored a data monitoring program to first help determine the type and number of pests and predators in the area before we start with a more comprehensive trapping plan in areas adjacent to the river.

All part of our efforts to help make our river ecosystem predator free before 2050 and to create bird corridors from Pukaha to Kawakawa.

Students and a number of teaching staff from Opaki and Rathkeale volunteered to help plant over 500 native seedlings around a stream adjacent to the Rathkeale Eco Trail behind the Ruamahanga River. Special thanks to both schools and for the support of Masterton Trust House for contributing towards the cost of the seedlings, and Trevor Thompson for his conservation expertise and guidance.

What was your role as the school's Environment Prefect?

At Rathkeale, the role consisted of ensuring the sustainability of the school’s environmental footprint. This fits into two areas, interior and exterior. Interior being the school’s physical environment, such as waterways, biodiversity, habitat – and exterior being the school’s impact outside of the school grounds, such as the use of plastics and recycling.

Have your views on conservation and environment protection changed since attending high school?

From a young age I was always interested in animals and I still am. I found a passion for agriculture and hunting in New Zealand wilderness areas. These three things have all given me what I believe to be a very neutral stand point. I want to preserve the natural ecosystems and do whatever I can to sustain the balancing act between native habitat and industry.

Since attending Rathkeale I think I’ve become less naive when it comes to conservation. I understand the work that goes in a lot more. In my time, I’ve done a lot of service projects, volunteering at Pukaha, trapping inside and outside the school and tree planting – things which I have really enjoyed. I’ve also found myself helping with things I didn’t use to get involved with, mainly climate strikes. I’m not one for protesting, and I’m not one for emotional turmoil. I could probably write a lot on this but I think a lot of the people taking part in these don’t see the big picture. I want to help the environment, but from a farming perspective it’s not always compatible.

What do you see as some of the most pressing issues facing farmers within the Wairarapa in the coming years, and how do you think we can address them?

At home we have a 14-hectare life style block along the Tauweru river. It floods constantly. About two to three times a year it nearly covers all our most productive flats. I’d love to plant native species around the river and fence it off, but it’s not possible. I see conservation and farming as completely opposing forces. Throw my passion for hunting in and things get even more complicated.

My time at Rathkeale has shown me how the conservation sticker can be thrown onto a lot of things, often by people who don’t see the real picture and frankly can’t share my perspective. Maybe because they don’t have the same interests. I’m not saying my opinion is the need-all and end-all, but if I didn’t think it was the best then I wouldn’t really believe it would. I just want to impose a balance.

All the time I see wood pigeons around my house and we have a lot of hawthorn trees – introduced thorn bushes that produce berries every summer. The wood pigeons eat both the leaves and berries of these trees, in fact it’s why there are so many of them. The same could be said for the tui’s, pukekos, native ducks and other species, despite the large presence of mustelids and rats on our property. Despite millions of years of evolution to adapt to environment. They have undertaken behavioural evolution to capitalise on new food sources and habitat.

My father used to lease a farm next to Mt Bruce. The farm had a plague of rabbits because of the extensive trapping of other predatory animals. Because of the high rabbit populations there’s now bountiful food for the predators. It’s situations like these where I have to see the long-term solutions.

Native animals can and already have adapted to many introduced species, especially in Rathkeale, which in my opinion is a perfect amalgamation of introduced and native species.

Is the goal for New Zealand to be predator free by 2050 realistic? Do you think it’s something that all farmers and others within the wider community can get behind?

I’d say never. Just like climate neutrality is near impossible. The only potential method to achieve this goal would be genetic engineering of sterilised born species in a way that allows the genetics to be passed on. Even with this I’m positive life would find a way. Besides, this doesn’t support New Zealand’s GMO free label and could devastate overseas populations of Australian possums, for instance.

I’m not saying it’s a lost cause that should be abandoned. I think the permanent solution is to keep doing what where doing, continue to aim for controlling pest populations, but in a more sweeping manner that will give animals time to adapt. It’s long-term but it’s the only viable option. 

I’m old enough now to form my own opinions, created from trial and error, research and my own experiences. I can see the flaws in departments like DOC, as well as a lot of the biases farmers and conservationists have, including myself. The best I can do is find a sort of average answer that looks at all angles.

In many ways I see New Zealand conservation as flawed. I don’t agree with many practices but I also see the importance of it. Take 1080 for instance. I’m on the fence. I don’t like that it kills my deer but at the same time I can acknowledge its effectiveness in controlling pests. I can see that it does occasionally kill weka and kākā, but in general I would say it is an effective tool, one that probably has greatly varying success rates depending on the region and species in the area. If you had asked me my thoughts in year 9 and would have told you it was evil and that it killed all the deer I wanted to shoot.

Farmers have absolutely been under fire from all angles lately and I’ve seen the affects. I think we need to impose the improvement of the environment but not in a way that completely decimates the farmers voice. It’s just not productive. Conservation needs the farmers on its side if it doesn’t want an upstream battle.

There are many issues to address, including the cleanliness of the Ruamahanga, riparian planting zones and pest populations. Without the farmers help and expertise no progress will be made.

For example the One Billion Trees programme. Forestry doesn’t make good habitat native species at all, it’s pretty much devoid of life, I’ve found. At the same time farmers can’t just plant native forest without any financial return. A while ago I looked into native forestry but was disappointed to find out how poor this would actually be as a way of producing money.

I think riparian zones are a good start, especially considering the Wairarapa used to be a massive wetland. Promoting wetland habitat in the Wairarapa is probably most important especially considering the Wairarapa has pretty large quantities of native bush further towards the coast.

Rathkeale’s bush includes a lot of willow-choked swamp with a few toitoi and coprosmas thrown in. Needless to say the old ponds and the stream-fed swamp alongside the Ruamahanga is the ideal spot for a rejuvinated wetland, with the native scrub bordering the river acting as further habitat.

For those students staying on at school, how can they get more involved or more engaged in environment conservation projects? What do you think needs to be done to get more young people behind the need to restore and protect their environment?

I would like to see schools support conservation in the best way, for me that means more focus on tree planting and habitat restoration and trapping rather than recycling or climate change rallies.

Schools can make a big difference as working volunteers. Students like myself who can dig holes, plant trees, trap rats and do their part to help preserve the farming community and the native habitats that make places like Rathkeale so iconic, all working together in an effort to promote the growth of an ecological highway for more native species to return to lowland and wetland habitats. How awesome would it be to see blue ducks in the Rathkeale swamp and river, and kākā in the bush!

School leavers can also help to support school efforts. In a few years when I come back to the Wairarapa long-term, I’d like to help out.  One year as Environment Prefect isn’t really a lot of time.

When it comes to environmental issues,  what's your advice to other students?

If I had advice for other students – not everyone is into the bush, not everyone wants to skin possums or wear their skins, and go hunting and get their hands dirty. Not everyone loves the outdoor or cares about the natural ecosystem, but if you care even a little, help out, not just for yourself, but for your friends and family. Complete strangers that you’ve never met before care – so that you can swim in a river in summer and not mutate into some horrible organism!