TRC Riparian Team Leader Holly Laundon, left, with son Charlie, 4, and mum Vicki Jagersma at the Stratford A&P Showgrounds, one of the council's plant depots. Vicki is secretary for the A&P Association which runs the depot when plants are dispatched to landowners and farmers by a team of volunteers. Photo: Supplied / Taranaki Regional Council
The country's largest re-vegetation programme on private land has just planted its eight millionth tree.
The Taranaki Regional Council launched its award-winning Riparian Management Programme with a single tree in 1996 as a way to help protect the region's waterways.
Some 28 years later, 5385 kilometres of planting has taken place alongside hundreds of rivers and streams across the Taranaki ring plain in one of New Zealand's most successful collaborations between farmers, the community and a local authority to improve the quality of freshwater and ecosystems.
Land Services Manager Don Shearman, who ran the programme when it was launched, said it had "transformed the landscape" and had a positive impact on the region's ecosystems and biodiversity, and helped establish new native habitat.
"We're delighted to have reached another landmark with the number of riparian plants now distributed to farmers in Taranaki at more than eight million," he said.
"We couldn't have achieved this result without working together with the farming community and all the other stakeholders who have an interest in freshwater quality.
"It's by far the most successful voluntary fencing and planting programme in the country without ratepayer subsidies and we believe it's made a significant improvement to ecosystems and water quality."
Shearman looked forward to further water quality improvement as plants matured and remaining riparian margins were fenced and planted adequately.
"However, we know with the government's new water quality standards, there's still a huge amount of work to be done in this area but the riparian programme has given us a strong platform to build on."
Landowners worked closely with Land Management Officers who developed free, property-specific riparian management plans and provided recommendations and technical advice on where to fence and how to plant waterways with the right plant in the right place, Shearman said.
Through a tender system, contracts for growing native plants in bulk were awarded to commercial nurseries a year in advance of planting so that they had time to grow.
They were then sold on to farmers at wholesale prices.
To ensure the system remained efficient, the council ensured the right number of plants were grown each year. Therefore, landowners order them a year in advance and pay a small deposit to secure their order.
"We've been talking to our community about freshwater as we look to create a new Land and Freshwater Plan for Taranaki and we've had strong support for continuing the programme," said Shearman.
"Our ambition is to have riparian planting - where appropriate - and fencing on all rivers and streams in the ring plain and that's something we'll continue to work to achieve in the future.
"We started the native plant scheme with a single plant 28 years ago and now we're at 8,142,487 plants and this doesn't even include all the plants that farmers have bought independently or grown themselves. That's an incredible achievement for our Riparian Management Programme."
The focus of the programme was currently on auditing all existing riparian management plans to ensure existing plantings and buffers were working as intended.
It has been recognised with a Green Ribbon Award from the Ministry for the Environment, and awards from the Geospatial World Forum and the NZ Resource Management Law Association.