Council update on land management

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

A GDC activities report for a recent council meeting discussed expansion of its land management team over recent months, and progress establishing “effective tree cover” requirements of the Tairāwhiti Resource Management Plan for the region’s worst eroding land, labelled Land Overlay 3A.

An update on the Sustainable Hill Country Project began by noting that 26 percent of the region’s land was susceptible to severe erosion, compared with 8 percent for all of New Zealand. This programme was helping to address that by building the council’s land management capability and expertise, paving the way for future land treatment work.

As well as tree cover requirements, there had been progress in establishing long-term vegetation cover and managed reversion on erosion-prone land, “with plantation species confined to slopes that can be safely harvested in future”.

Expansion of the land management section was to address increasing demands of the freshwater reforms, particularly the Freshwater Farm Environment Plan (FWFP) process, and other changes at a national level.

Twelve properties throughout the region were part of a FWFP pilot, along with properties  in Southland and Waikato, that assessed a range of farming systems, tenures and governance structures. Land management staff from the three region’s councils also participated.

Valuable information was gained during the pilot for the Ministry for the Environment (MfE), the council and landowners. However, follow-up with MfE was postponed due to the cyclones and had not been revisited.

The FWFP process should have been rolled out here in recent months, but the requirement for FWFPs in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay has been deferred until 2025 due to the impacts of the cyclones.

Funding from MfE had enabled the recruitment of a team leader for land management, an iwi/hapū adviser, a regional catchment facilitator and one of three senior catchment advisers.

The region had been divided into three catchment areas: Waipaoa, Motu and Hangaroa; Waimatā, Waiomoko, Pakarae and Uawa (including Mangahauini); and Waiapu, Waikura and other northern catchments.

“The funding arrangements are sufficiently flexible to allow a wide range of work streams to be progressed by the land management section. This includes assessment of land for land use change and the Forestry Plan Changes and ongoing assistance to catchment planning (simultaneous work by the strategic planning department), other National Policy Statements, assistance to technical advice for regional resource consents, and continuation of existing initiatives.”