What's Happening in the Piako Catchment… January 2021

Happy New Year!! Here at the Piako Catchment Forum we are looking forward to a productive year of community conservation. As it is summer, please remember to conserve water!

Native Seed — What to collect now… Motumaoho School—a PCF and Enviroschools journey

Beilschmiedia tawa - Tawa PCF volunteers Te Aroha Drummond and Ruairi Kelly recently met with staff of Motumaoho School, Tawa trees grow in a wide range of forest located between Morrinsville and Hamilton. types and are predominantly found The Enviroschools programme has been developed in mature forests, for 20 years and now has over 1400 schools and coping well under Early Childhood centres, supported by their local shade. They are district and regional councils. The programme uses slow to establish an ‘Action Learning Cycle’ to help structure and and produce only support action-based learning. small amounts of Motumaoho have been ‘Identifying the current fruit in the form of a situation’, taking stock of what is important to large purple drupe. students and community -which was to use the Collect the fruit off whole school as a learning environment. Students the ground or lower wanted to know about the health of the stream at branches. the bottom of the ‘wild’ gully, so working with Propagation: The Ruairi they assessed the health using equipment seeds have only a and educational resources from Waikato regional very light seed coat Council’s programme 'Rivers-and-us'. Whilst doing and don't store well. a habitat assessment they discovered that there Press well into a bed had been previous planting, that Waikato Regional Council has supported, but more could be done. of seed raising mix but do not cover. Next they asked Ruairi to help identify the native Shoots will appear in species in the gully and help identify the invasive a month or two species. Working with the PCF for the past two depending on the years, Ruairi knew there were community temperature. members who were in a much better position to help.

Also other native seed out there to First the common nasties Tradescantia, Japanese Honeysuckle and Privet were collect right now: identified. The next step of the Enviroschools Action learning Cycle is ‘Explore Alternatives’, so the students could investigate and balance the options of the Mangeo, Mingimingi, Kiekie, Kareao, Tradescantia being sprayed, pulled up or introducing a bio agent of beetles. turutu, makomako, turepo, matai, It was clear that this was to be a long-term project and so a phased mixed tanekaha, rimu, mountain flax, approach was discussed, with students, parents & community focussing on the Kahikatea and toetoe. upper section before working down the slope to the stream edge.

(Information thanks to the Department of Conservation What was clear was many of the WRC and nzpcn.org.nz) planted native species had done well and were producing seed. Te Aroha shared her expertise in how the many Kahikatea Forest Health pittosporums transfer seed by them sticking to the legs of the birds and was Assessment Training Day also able to show the difference between ‘Mountain Flax’ and by the Where: Hawes Bush, Waharoa seed pods facing down rather than up When: Saturday 13th February 2021 like the Harakeke. There are opportunities for the students to use As part of the connecting the Waitoa the area and develop their learning project, we are assessing the health of along with restoring the gully. Seeds kahikatea forest fragments using the could be gathered and grown on to Kahikatea Green Wheel assessment tool repopulate the gully or offered to local developed by Waikato Regional Council. landowners for riparian planting. There This tool is designed to provide may be an opportunity to see if the large trees in the area are home to bats, landowners with a baseline for the health meaning the school could be kaitiaki for them and develop predator traps to help of their forests and support the them. development of management plans to improve health ratings. This is really Ruairi also suggested that the school could link up with other PCF activities - such helpful for landowners in applying for as the Morrinsville River Walk, local organisations – like Weedbusters or schools funding either individually or as a that have undertaken gully restoration. collective. Next step is to bring all the ideas together with the students and develop a plan and only then…. to take action!

To encourage community and landowner (Photos care of Ruairi Kelly—WRC Environmental Education Facilitator) involvement in conducting the green wheel assessments, Norm Mason is planning to run a training day at Hawes Social housing for bats! Bush in Waharoa for interested community members. He also hopes to After recent publicity around the rediscovery develop a schedule for completing of endangered long-tailed bats in assessments in the Waitoa this summer. Morrinsville, volunteers at the local MenzShed were keen to find a way to give Norm has a PhD in Botany so this is a them a helping hand. Bill Mace decided that chance for anyone with an interest in he could apply his handyman skills to some native plants to learn how to identify the surplus timber he had lying around to build species that are most common in our bat roosting boxes. local forests. It’s also a great opportunity to spend time in some of the few In heavily deforested areas, such as the precious forest fragments left on the Hauraki Plains, bats may struggle to find Hauraki Plains and contribute to their suitable roost sites. Also, possums and rats ongoing protection. often compete with bats for the few roost sites that are available. Providing artificial If you’re interested, please don’t hesitate roost sites is a key component in increasing to get in touch with Norm. bat numbers in areas with little remaining forest. The Morrinsville MenzShed is Contact: Norm Mason providing an admirable example in acting to E: [email protected] promptly to solve this local housing crisis! Ph: 021 153 5031 This is a great example of what can be Bill Mace, Morrinsville’s resident bat achieved when volunteer groups within the community support each other. It should box builder with two of his creations. For more information about the serve as good motivation for people doing great things in the community to share Piako Catchment Forum have a look their stories. You never know who might be out there looking for a way to contribute. at: The MenzShed is currently fundraising for a www.piakocatchment.co.nz bigger shed, having reached capacity in their present location. They are keen for www.facebook.com/PiakoCatchmentForum/ opportunities to apply their handy skills in raising funds. www.instagram.com/piakocatchmentforum/

Or email: You can contact Bill at [email protected] if you have a job that might be suitable for them.

[email protected] (Photos care of Norm Mason and the Department of Conservation)