The following actions occurred across late Feb/March:
· Te Hōnonga a Iwi welcomed Brightstar as our newest organisation looking to increase their sustainability and support local socio-ecological action. We thank Brightstar for their $3,500 education fund that will allow us to run two soil microscopy study mornings for 40 students and a student-led study day for 100 students and develop some online pieces that will offer educational opportunity to the wider audience in 2023. Te Hōno is consulting with teacher leads to coordinate delivering the education programme. Toni Shaw, ASHS, has kindly offered to host the soil microscopy sessions again this year.
· Te Hōno has a community working bee April 22 from 9am to 11am behind Hilton Brown Swimming and a business working bee on April 26 from 3pm to 4.30pm on site. Please RSVP to hello@restoringrosedalepark.org.nz if you are interested in contributing value to this project. All welcome. No skills needed.
· Nicholas Mayne identified a mass loss of eels in Omega Stormwater Ponds that lead into Alexander Stream. Nicholas reported the incident to several agencies and Council help lines. No feedback regarding the death of the eels has been received at the time of writing the report.
· Post Cyclone Gabrielle, we halted water quality testing. We need to re-do the health and safety (H&S) plan and ensure the site is safe to return to test the water quality. Once this has occurred, our current water quality tester Lavender Feng will do a teaching session with our new youth leader, Alicia.
· Te Hōno supplied Warwick Smith and Matt Cummings with sequential photos of the process of land clearance, mulching, cover crop and plant growth. All photos are available for stakeholders to use under General Channel on Teams. We take monthly photos of the site over time.
· Ben, Sustainable Schools, interviewed Te Hōno re its sustainability journey. His research findings will be presented April 5.
· Subject to landowner approval, Acacia and Jon, Ventia have kindly agreed to assess if Ventia can support Te Hōno further by close mowing the new 2023 extension in May to enable us to sow cover crops in readiness for planting this season.
· Te Hōno, NHHA and Trust presented a verbal submission to the Upper Harbour Local Board to request consideration of the removal of the dying and old macrocarpa trees in Rosedale Park and having permission to replace them with native bush to increase health and safety, biodiversity and use of the park by sports codes that are limited at present due to debris and safety issues.
· Business North Harbour (BNH) continues its communications support of Te Hōno with forwarding the March working bee opportunity and a request for funding support to help begin seed collection and potting ($700), purchase of 2023 cover crop seeds ($1800), and bioreactor materials ($2 500). Please let us know if your organisation is willing to fund these pieces for 2023 on hello@restoringrosedalepark.org.nz
· Pharmacare are interested in becoming a Te Hōno stakeholder. They contacted us through BNH advertisements. We will connect with green lead Kylie Fordyce when they have bandwidth to do so.
· Amazing Youth leader Ceinwen Evans and parent Selma Dancy, Matt Cummings (Untangled Landscapes) and Sarah Wakeford, general all round great person, undertook the first plant survival and growth survey at Te Hōno. We are using the advanced plant survey approach recommended by Trees for Survival to apply best practice to generate quality data results. The results are under Data Collection Channel, Plant Survival, on Teams.
· The planned water quality assessment teaching session with the new Youth Leader Alicia Stowers and Water Quality (WQ) Lead Lavender Feng had to be postponed post floods and cyclone. We needed to undertake a Health and Safety review and ensure the stream was safely accessible. We plan to organise the next WQ assessment in April.
· There have been several trees that have come down and blocked access to WQ and pest management sites. Stephen Cammell and Les Wootton are kindly helping to assess the damage to the tracks. We thank them both especially for their ongoing commitment to the development of the park.
· We thank our IT stakeholder Command IT for continuing its commitment to support us by funding our online communications. The website is increasingly accessed, and we appreciate the ongoing IT support.
· Rotary Albany has now paid for the Rock sign to be moved from Whangarei and installed at the site. Kaumatua Richard Nahi has outlined a plan of action to ensure we honour Papatuanuku as we move the taonga from Northland to its new resting place in Rosedale Park. Richard has signalled he will travel north to bless the rock and ensure the rock is welcomed in a culturally appropriate way when it arrives and is embedded on the corner of Hilton Brown land and the park. We thank Rotary and Ngāti Whātua O Kaipara for their leadership. The rock will become a permanent reminder of the value of durable natural products that we will use to engrave QR codes linking park visitors to the website and education pieces about the sustainability aspects of the project.
· Auckland Council extended an invitation for Te Hōno to attend an inaugural seed collection workshop in March. If Council approves our current request, we will be able to begin harvesting seeds to grow a local crop. Nicholas Mayne, who has been instrumental in supporting Te Hōno with his expert knowledge and gifting Te Hōno with 2023 natives from his private nursery, has been approached for advice on how we may leverage our local people from the primary school and the rest home to start a nursery together.
· Dan Marrow, Park Ranger, has worked for months to determine an acceptable solution for the new wild cat population that has moved into the park during the pandemic. One of our local stakeholders, ICB, who supply our water from their roofline for the bioreactors, has kindly agreed to learn how to use the live traps and monitor the traps daily to reduce the cat population’s negative effects on the bird life within the park. Strict criteria are in place to ensure the wellbeing of the cats and to ensure they are safely transferred to the SPCA for a vet assessment and rehoming.
· North Harbour Hockey’s work leading Te Hōnonga a Iwi Restoring Rosedale Park has been acknowledged at the 2022 Hockey NZ Awards. The project has been named as one of three finalists in the Community Initiative of the Year category.
· Rhiannon Leddra, UWEN, has shared the eDNA report for Oteha Stream following Massey University’s Bioblitz. Please find the date available on the eDNA website or on Teams under Data Collection, Water Quality folder. The stream is in poor health. We hope to source funding to support Westminster Christian School in their mahi to assess Water Quality and improve stream health by funding eDNA tests for them.
· Te Hōnonga a Iwi thanks Davenports Law for their funding of the 2022 cover crop. The crop is receding as it should now and is expected to regrow from dormant seeds this winter. The funding for the crop has led to high success and we are beyond grateful to have achieved this piece of the puzzle.
· Te Hōno submitted commentary on the Mayor’s Draft Budget
· EKOS supported Te Hōno to review the requirements for data emissions data collect.
· Matt (Untangled Landscapes) undertook a site tidy, storing the PVC bioreactor pipes at his depot for us and removing the unused pallets back into the waste stream.
· Warwick Smith, Alannah Ryan and Matt Cummings, from Massey University and Untangled, presented a lecture on the use of Integrated Value to Bioblitz visitors. We are thankful to Massey, one of our key stakeholders for the opportunity to co-present and congratulate the University on their undertaking and successful Bioblitz outcomes.
· Sophie Haine, Youth Pest Management Lead, Te Hōno, with incredible support from Matthew Lee, has completed another month of pest management following the cyclone. We did experience a lost Flipping Timmy trap and challenging conditions on the track which have been reported. Thank you Sophie and Matthew, and whanau, for your leadership in this space. You remain the backbone of the project and we could not do without you. Pest management reports are loaded under Data Collection Channel, Pest Management folder on Teams.
· Caleb Young and Miriam Scott, youth leads in water management, continue to monitor the bioreactor water supply and equipment/pumps to ensure the bacteria receive the optimum water they need to survive. Thank you both for your exemplary leadership week-on-week.
· Dan Marrow, Matt Cummings and Nicky Shave drafted a new landowner approval request that would enable sequential development of the park year-on-year subject to Council direction. North Harbour Hockey Association has kindly supported the application to gain permission to undertake serial plantings across 2023- 2025, permission to place signage in the park and to collect seeds to grow our own plants. Thank you NHHA for funding the application. We have been advised there is a four to six week turnaround re decision.
· Seven large macrocarpa trees were downed in the cyclone. This has been reported to Council.
· Fifteen community members worked hard at the first community working bee in six months to release natives. We thank Dan Marrow’s work to deliver equipment to enable us to increase our circularity ands reduce our footprint. We have two more sessions organised in April to finish the releasing and managing any creepers. Please consider booking time in your diary to make a climate positive difference.
· Te Hōno has written a letter of support for UWEN to obtain funding to enable UWEN to fulfil its strategic vision for 2023.
· Rhiannon Ledra and Nicky Shave attended the EDS Enviro Law and Policy Conference. Notes will be posted in Reference Channel on Team in two weeks.
Thank you all for your incredible ongoing support. We are in a special position where the level of community engagement and the success of the 2022 soil health campaign will enable us to extend the restoration by 2000m2 this year, four years ahead of schedule. A truly remarkable testament to our stakeholders and a fantastic result that will enable, subject to Council consent, us to sequester a lot more carbon to mitigate climate change.
Comments