After being encouraged to drain wetlands on their farm in the 1980s, a Golden Bay couple is already seeing the benefits of transforming the land back to its natural state.
Tony Reilly and his wife Kathy have transformed 7,400 square metres of their Motupipi farm back into a wetland, over two stages since 2021 in a bid to improve the health of the tributary.
Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
“The catchment’s quite large, it catches quite a bit of water, so when there's a rain event, and Golden Bay has quite a lot of rain, it comes up and floods right across the valley floor. The wetland is an area of about a hectare, or just under a hectare of land,” Tony Reilly told Country Life.
A meandering creek was straightened into “a nice straight ditch” and “a whole lot of crack willows” were removed back in the 1980s. But now that is all changing, he says.
The regeneration has been made possible by Jobs for Nature with consent and technical support from Tasman District Council, Reilly says.
“The first stage was done a couple of years ago, which Kathy and I planted. And then the next stage was done last autumn and that was a bigger area.
“And so, folks came in and did the planting for us on that when we think it was about 7000 native trees, which were sourced locally, which was great.”
One final stage this coming autumn will complete the wetland. Even at this stage of the project, Reilly says wildlife is coming back to the area.
“The dry creek ditch approach that I was talking about is now back into a meandering creek.
“And some of those wee small springs in the sides of the banks have been made into lakes and little wee ponds and lakes, we've always got heaps of pukeko and mallards, but the I guess the most significant one that we've seen as in the area has been some juvenile bitterns.”
The whole project has been run as a collaboration, he says
“We've had the local iwi involved at stage two as well, with a karakia at the beginning of the project there. We've also had Project De-Vine have been coming in and they did the main planting as well, which is a wonderful group in Golden Bay looking at getting rid of wilding, pines and the banana passionfruit.”
Having spent many years as a young man straightening the creek and cutting trees with a chainsaw, he’s happy to see the land regenerating, he says.
“When you see it progressing like it is with the new growth for the last two years on the natives, it’s a beautiful area now.”
