Wainui Catchment Group

The Wainui Beach Coastal Catchment stretches north of Gisborne city along SH35’s gateway

to the Tairāwhiti East Cape and is known for its iconic sandy beach, nationally significant surfbreaks, fishing, reef-kai, and beautiful rural vistas.

The catchment’s 1,468 hectares include the sub-catchments of the Wainui (595Ha) and Hamanatua (873Ha) streams.

Our Vision: Intergenerational wellbeing/ora of our Taiao and community is sustained and enhanced. Together, we will achieve this vision by cherishing wisdom, honouring history, learning from the past, embracing diversity, and restoring the environment to build a more sustainable and positive future for our community and catchments.

The health and wellbeing of our friendly community will be enhanced by collectively restoring and valuing our streams and wetlands, thus nurturing a legacy with and for the next generation.

Our five goals are:

• Wai Ora - to improve water quality by lowering E. coli levels, sediment thus phosphorus loads and water temperature - to restore freshwater habitats for native fauna and flora and for children to play and swim safely, and eventually all to eat and drink from.

• Recloaking Papatūānuku - to reduce erosion on steep hills and streambanks (through strategic fencing, planting, retirement, native reversion, slash/woody debris, pest control etc.

• Collaborative decision-making - to deepen community and stakeholder involvement in project planning and implementation throughout the sub-catchments.

• Awareness and Education - to increase opportunities for community education and upskilling in environmental restoration, local history, well-being, freshwater quality and biomonitoring, erosion control, sustainable development, etc.

• Resource Mobilisation - to use the strengths, diverse skills and resources already available within the community and catchments, and to securing additional in-kind support, expert advice, and funding to implement prioritised action projects.

Research has shown high sediment levels are a major driver of poor ecological health in our Catchment’s waterways, and that riparian planting and wetland restoration or reconstruction -to slow runoff, filter and reduce sediment, contaminants and rising water temperatures - will significantly improve and restore the ecological health of our smaller waterways (and more easily than in larger rivers in the wider region).

Our action priorities, therefore, are to develop interlinked projects which focus on:

o Restoring remnant wetlands

o Planting riparian corridors and vulnerable gullies and hills

o Freshwater quality and biomonitoring

o Community education and intergenerational upskilling.

In living memory, the catchment’s once tranquil healthily biodiverse waterways were happy safe places for children to play and swim, and for all to eat and drink from. Freshwater kai (including tuna, inanga and koura) used to thrive in great abundance in the streams and wetlands, along with native water birds (such as pukeko and heron), insects and amphibian species, as well as marine kai in the coastal reefs (including paua, koura & wheke).

Today increasingly intense storms slam the coast, and more frequent runoff flows down the occasionally grazed coastal hills - which rise steeply to 235m above sea level within 0 to 0.5kms from the beach - culminating in severe flooding, saturated soils, higher water tables, and slips, slumps and mudslides mobilising soil into the streams and many puna (springs) which flow on to 4.2km-long Wainui Beach and into the sea.

During storm surges forestry slash now is also crashing in from the ocean and up the stream mouths, where it sloshes around damaging flora and fauna, eroding banks and damming culverts. Wainui stream, once an important mahinga kai for tangata whenua, now has one of the highest sediment loads (thus also phosphorous levels) in the wider area, and is contaminated with ammoniacal nitrogen and E.coli levels amongst the 25% worst sites in NZ (sources of which have been traced in its mid-reaches to dogs and city stormwater overflows, and in lower reaches to dogs, birds and ruminants1). Previously extensive wetlands across the Coastal Catchment, including those that used to filter, soak-up and slow down runoff from 600Ha on to the Wainui floodplains have been drained (and some recently paved over as city subdivisions), and stock are not excluded from the few remaining wetlands. Hamanatua stream, with slightly less E. coli and ammoniacal nitrogen, has phosphorus amongst the worst 50% sites, and its suspended sediments and nitrate nitrogen levels are amongst the worst 25%.

Currently, known freshwater species in the catchment include longfin eel and inanga which are at Risk/Declining; as well as shortfin eel, four species of bully, banded kokopu, common smelt, pest and mosquito fish. Once abundant koura has disappeared, and speckled longfin eel is rare. Given extensive connectivity between the waterways and marine area, fewer coastal and estuarine amphibian, insect, fish and bird species (including korora, heron and kotare) now inhabit the intertidal zone.

In response to this escalating crisis and increasing anxiety amongst our younger and older generations about threats to our environment and community, exacerbated by devastation experienced before during and post Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle), an intergenerational community-led initiative - The Wainui Beach Community Catchment Group - has gathered momentum over the past year. Our dual aim is to restore the ecological health of our streams and enhance the intergenerational health and wellbeing of our coastal community through deepening our connections with te taiao (natural environment) and each other.

Our highly engaged and expanding catchment group of (now) 125+ landowners and residents comprise tangata whenua, farmers, Wainui-Okitu beach settlement residents, some Sponge Bay & Tamarau city subdivision residents, and local organisations – including Wainui Beach School (an Enviro-school with its own native plant nursery), Wainui Surf Lifesaving Club, Wainui Playcentre, Wainui Beach Coast Care Group, local Boardriders and businesses.