The Waikato River Authority has awarded $2.17 million to three Waikato Regional Council catchment-scale projects and its new Māori medium environmental educational programme to benefit the health and wellbeing of the Waikato and Waipā rivers.

The funding is for projects involving landowners, iwi and community groups, with project management by Waikato Regional Council.

The latest funding includes:

• $1.34 million over three years towards stage two of the council’s partnership Ngā Wai o Waikato project in the lower Waikato River catchment to support landowners wishing to retire and plant erodable hill country and stream margins and retire forest remnants (co-funded by landowners and Waikato Regional Council)
• $402,739 over three years towards the new central Waikato hill country and streambank erosion protection and remediation project in partnership with Ngāti Hauā Mahi Trust (co-funded by landowners and Waikato Regional Council), which builds on the Karapiro and Mangaonua catchments shovel ready project
• $99,949 over two years towards the Waipā River Protection and Enhancement project, which has been underway since 2014 to reduce erosion and enhance riparian margins along the Waipā River upstream of Ōtorohanga (co-funded by landowners and Waikato Regional Council)
• $331,200 over three years towards Kura Waiti ki Kura Waita (River Schools to Moana Schools) to develop and implement an advancing mātauranga māori kaupapa in environmental education.

Waikato and West Coast Catchments Manager Grant Blackie says the council applies for funding for ongoing large-scale catchment management projects on behalf of, or in partnership with, landowners, iwi or community groups.

“By us applying for funding from organisations such as WRA, it gives security over multiple years to do these larger programmes of work and it also gives landowners the incentive to go above and beyond the environmental work they might normally otherwise do, alone.

“This mean, in the past five years, we have jointly been able to financially assist 1823 landowners by offering greater incentives for fencing and planting or hill country erosion work than if we were to rely just on the rates we collect for catchment management.”

The council’s Kura Waiti ki Kura Waita programme was launched this year.

Kaihapa Hotaka Mātauranga Arna Solomon-Banks says the programme came about because the regional council was looking for a meaningful way to support kura with environmental learning in a way that supported te reo, tikanga and mātauranga.

“Kura Waitī is about engaging our rangatahi in fun ways, hands on, on the awa, learning about the tikanga of waka and the mātauranga, the stories of the awa from the awa people, and sharing that reliving.”

The programme aligns with giving effect to Te Ture Whaimana o Te Awa o Waikato – the Vision and Strategy for the Waikato River, the primary direction-setting document for the restoration and protection of the Waikato River.

The council is also a co-funder (to a total of $112,560) of three other projects to receive WRA funding. They are:

• Waikato River Care’s Opuatia Wetland project, which supports wider work in the catchment and wetland
• Stage 2 of the Mangaorongo Stream Restoration Project
• Te Puea Hērangi wetland restoration project with Tūrangawaewae Trust Board and Fonterra.

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