Brian Grant (left) and Brian Airey say they are forced to "sneak around" to remove mangroves. Photo / Alison Smith
Brian Grant (left) and Brian Airey say they are forced to "sneak around" to remove mangroves. Photo / Alison Smith
There's not a lot that makes sense to Brian Airey when it comes to his lifetime of effort maintaining the white sands of Whangamata Harbour.
That's little wonder, when he received a community service medal from one council for his work and an infringement letter from the other.
"I strongly feel time is running out if this community is to be enabled to restore our beautiful harbour," he says.
Based on 2018 figures, $1.54 million has been spent on mangrove removal under Waikato Regional Council (WRC), which used helicopters among its tools.
Only 30 per cent of the amount was spent on removal operations - with a quarter of the money going on legal and consultant costs, and the remainder on "oversight" (20 per cent), monitoring and mitigation (12 per cent), and consent compliance (13 per cent).
Harbour Care removed 4000sq m of mature mangroves from Patiki Bay in July 2000 under a trial with WRC.
Volunteers had success at the remainder of the Patiki Bay area - known as "area f" in a WRC mangrove management consent - where they were given permission in 2013 to remove 2.33 hectares of mangroves.
"We cut it, heaped it and burned it for nothing," says Airey. "The only charge that was made was for the WRC staff to come and watch us."
Patiki Bay remains an example of what can be achieved by a bunch of volunteers and some common sense.
"It's our pride and joy," says Airey.
For outstanding effort restoring the harbour, Brian Airey and fellow Whangamata residents Ian Feasey, John Dick and Brian Grant were recognised in the Thames-Coromandel District Council's Community Service Awards in 2019.
"When it comes to mangrove removal, we've got umpteen years of experience. And yet when they need something done in our harbour they go to contractors in Tauranga with all the costs that entails," says Grant.
Grant displays his medal alongside a framed copy of the infringement letter he got a decade earlier from WRC.
He was sent the warning letter when WRC staff saw him trying to maintain the work he and others had done in the trial at Patiki Bay, cutting down a single mangrove bush in 2008.
The regional council had a range of options available to enforce the requirements of the Resource Management Act and Regional Plans, it states.
"In this regard, any future unauthorised mangrove removal may result in enforcement action being undertaken."
WRC staff have since worked with the community to implement mangrove removal within the legal constraints of a consent issued in 2012.
The resource consent was issued by the Environment Court and the resulting conditions were a compromise by parties with divergent views, the council says.
"The group is able to work within the conditions of our current resource consent, or we have offered to pay the deposit if they would like to seek their own resource consent," says WRC's Coromandel zone manager Dean Allen.
He said seedlings are well defined in the consent and when being removed, a scrub bar must not be used.
He added that there had been no impact on banded rail and other bird habitat, algal blooms or odour issues, and there's been no decline in overall harbour health.
Grant says there have been great gains for birdlife.
Environmental consultant Brian Coffey found in his years of study that mangrove removals had shifted mud in Patiki Bay, but significant rainfall events dumped more silt that "masked the effects of mangrove removal" and reportedly killed pipi and other shellfish.
The source of this silt was clear-felled plantation forestry to the southwest of the disposal area for treated wastewater from the Whangamata wastewater treatment plant, Coffey's report states.
"We believe the birdlife has increased where the mangroves have been removed. And the snapper have moved back in.
"If we hadn't done something 20 years ago we would've had no bays in the upper harbour left. They would've been all covered in mangroves, and it was closing in on the main channel. We would have had a marsh."
The harbour care group has decided they will not undertake any more seedling removal while faced with a consent that's "unworkable".
Now they worry that all their gains will be lost if they are not allowed to remove new seedlings in a way that works for them, so they're doing it their way.
"If we hadn't done this, the area from one point to the other would have been solid mangroves with a mud bath in between," adds Brian Grant.
Brian Grant and Brian Airey at Whangamata's Patiki Bay where they say mangrove removal is bringing back the sand. Photo / Alison Smith
Grant turns 90 in December and Airey is 86 this month.
They admit they're not as agile as they once were - and the mangrove seedlings are not slowing down.
They are not allowed to use weedeaters but they have been using them.
"It's the only sensible way to do it."
Allen, who is based at Whitianga, said in 2019 that WRC was committed to maintaining the gains by carrying out ongoing seedling removal from the consented areas.
"Seedling management will be carried out only as needed and we will now look to other local groups, or contractors if necessary, to support and work with."
However, the men say seedling removal conditions are unworkable not just for old blokes, but for anyone.
Late last year at the causeway in Whangamata, the WRC contractors were observed by Harbour Care volunteers.
"I saw contractors from Tauranga plucking the seedlings out by hand and putting them into bags and having to take them to shore. The second day I went past they'd given up on that and had weedeaters in there," says Grant.
I think the problem is they were caught out doing something they told us not to do.
Airey says the situation was ludicrous.
"Instead of sneaking around trying to hide [how we operate] from people, I want it out in the open."
Allen says in the case of the recent seedling removals, the plants were 2 years old and not seedlings, due to missing a year following a "saltmarsh-damaging incident" and the Harbour Care group's decision to withdraw from seedling removal work.
"In dealing with the plants larger than seedling size, we complied with consent conditions by submitting an operational plan. This enabled the council's integrated catchment staff to use the full suite of conditions allowed for around saplings and mature plants, including the use of scrub bars and other methods."
Grant says if they themselves had followed the consent in removing seedlings, they wouldn't be allowed to use scrub bars.
"I think the problem is they were caught out doing something they told us not to do. But I can't disagree with them because I didn't measure them."
Allen says the council encourages the group to focus on the review of the Waikato Regional Coastal Plan, currently under way.
"This is the mechanism for them to contribute their views towards the future management of mangroves in the region's coastal marine area, including views on methodology," he says.
Grant says while they have submitted, the timeline for implementation of any change remains a worry.
