Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 45
Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
The Wharemauku creek divides the town and
is spring fed so it never dries up. It is a picturesque asset, but has a number
of tributaries that pick up effluent as they pass through it. Rather than
stopping this pollution at its source, a restoration project was begun in one
of the feeder drains (Drain 6) to try and clean it up. It is a serious attempt
to mitigate pollution, by making a wetland from scratch and was also designed
to benefit wetland birds.
So how successful has it been?
The project has been managed by a
volunteer NGO –the Friends of the Wharemauku Stream (FOWS) - under the auspices
of the local Council, utilising money from Transpower. Transpower runs the national electricity grid
and is a CCE – a stand alone Government business and this cash has been
controversial because it was a mitigating
quid pro quo for a Transpower pylon
project above the town. To quell opposition $70,000 was donated to local
environment projects,
 |
| Transpower transmission above Paraparaumu town |
The pylons were predicted to be a visual
eyesore and so they have proved to
be. Yet the quid pro quo wetland itself, now
looks like a case study in how not to go about rehabilitating a natural area.
The wetland was designed to operate on three fronts -to use
riparian plantings that would filter pollutant seeping from the land before it
reached the drain -to excavate three small ‘settling’ ponds lined with stones that
would screen out pollutant before it entered the main creek -to provide an attractive scenic vista close to the centre of town.
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| Restored wetland - Drain 6 |
This drain doesn’t have a spring source. It is rain dependent and originally dug to lower the Wharemauku Swamp water table to make the surrounding land farmable. On the best of days it is very sluggish and whenever the Wharemauku rises after rain, instead of flushing the drain out, it back-fills it. It doesn’t take much rain for it to begin doing this and quickly flood the area of plantings along with the path beside it.
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| Polluted wetland Oct 15 |
A similar question mark hangs over the
riparian filtration. It is certainly good to have a community involved in
utilising this kind of planting strategy. The pollutant however doesn’t appear
to be coming from this wetland's surrounds, but further upstream where there are no
riparian plantings.
Around this now fetid waterway an
attractive park-like area continues to be constructed, but the birds it is
attracting aren’t the rarer wild waterbirds but animals used to human contact from the town – notably introduced mallards along with an occasional pukeko. But even
these are rare. It is too small to provide a regular source of food for ducks
and too enclosed and close to traffic and pedestrians to provide a haven for
waders like pied stilt and white faced heron.
And this is a feature of many of the
reconstructed wetlands in the district. They are built first and foremost for
the pleasure of the local public. A successful wetland that attracts our rare
native waterbirds including ducks, grebes, scaup and waders, needs three
essential features -to be large, -to provide a safe environment (safe from humans that is) with good visibility. It needs to provide room for our larger birds in
particular, to take off and land. It also needs to able to grow good wild food
for these animals. None of this is provided in this small area.
A particular point is that the public must be kept at a
distance and at the moment the exact opposite is happening with landscaping paths designed to take us right into their midst. The birds will vote with their wings on this issue. However all these conditions are being fulfilled at the dunelake which is why it attracts such a diversity of wetland birds.
Though not for much longer.
Track we were listening to while posting this was The incredible String Band -Maya -
The dust of the rivers does murmur and weep
Hard and sharp laughter that cuts to the bone
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