Waihora Ellesmere Trust

Landowners around Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere are being offered a wide range of free advice on how best to manage drains and waterways on their properties.

The Sustainable Drains Project is a new initiative from the Waihora Ellesmere Trust (WET), together with Environment Canterbury, Ngai Tahu, Selwyn District Council and Lincoln University. The full title is Sustainable Drain Management in Selwyn-Waihora – healthy waterways in productive land.

The aim of the project is to support and encourage landowners to improve management of drains and waterways around the lake.

Good examples of drain management will be promoted and options, including planting natives along the waterways around Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere, will be explored. The project will run over the next three years and aims to see improved management practices and an increase in drain/streamside planting, with improved stream health and ultimately improved water quality.

The team can offer local landowners a free restoration planning service, help with finding funding, and advice on successful approaches to drain management and riparian planting.

Part of the project will be trying to get a better understanding of a wide range of costs and benefits of planting with natives, and putting dollar values around that.  The costs of fencing and planting are fairly well understood but, with the help of Lincoln University students and staff, they’ll also be looking at the benefits that may come from keeping heavy stock out of drains and planting – reduced drain maintenance costs, improvements to soil, shelter, pollination, amenity, cultural and other values.

Minister for the Environment, Hon Dr Nick Smith, recently announced that the Ministry for the Environment’s Community Environment Fund, is contributing funding to this project. Other funding is coming from MAF’s Sustainable Farming Fund, Canterbury Community Trust and the partners.

Recent decades have seen a great deal of land use intensification around the Lake, and deteriorating water quality. The challenge is to find a balance between development and the environment.

The drainage network is vital for productive farms. As WET’s Chair, Brett Painter, said, “There are over 500kms of council managed drains and probably two to three times that length of private drains, all flowing eventually into the lake, and very little is fenced or planted. Improving the way we manage those drains isn’t going to solve everything, but it is one way to reduce the adverse effects of land use on the waterways and lake.”

Back in 2008 WET secured funding for a riparian restoration programme. This project has seen over 50,000 natives planted and a great deal has been achieved,

A summary has now been added to this page and can be accessed by clicking on this link.

Another 20,000 pages of The Ellesmere Guardian went online on April 15th, covering the period 1906 to 1945.  A celebration was held at Leeston Library in early May.

This a real partnership project, with WET coordinating financial contributions from Lincoln University Library, Selwyn District Libraries, Christchurch City Libraries, Ellesmere Historical Society and from WET.  The National Library matched this funding.  Thanks are also due to Fairfax Media who waived copyright restrictions to allow the material to be made publicly available.

In the month following the launch there were 5,613 unique visitors to the Ellesmere Guardian pages, compared with 1,123 unique visitors in the month of March – about a five fold increase in visitor numbers.  It will be interesting to check on the popularity of the site over the next few months.

WET’s riparian restoration programme, undertaken over the last couple of planting seasons, has provided a lot of information and helped us to understand what works well in the catchment.

We have now produced a new flyer summarising some of the key points to consider when undertaking riparian restoration and outlining the costs of each stage.

We will be adding further, more detailed, information over the next few weeks.

In response to concerns about the decline in the water quality of Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere, an Issues group was formed in 2002.  This group represented a wide range of interests and they met regularly over 2 years and consulted widely to develop a vision and Strategy for the future management of the Lake and catchment.  To implement the Strategy a charitable trust was formed in 2003 – Waihora Ellesmere Trust.

WET’s purpose is to facilitate and encourage the implementation of the Community Strategy and, with the Strategy including such a broad range of goals, targets and actions, this means that WET is involved in many different projects and works with many different agencies and organisations.  The Strategy can be downloaded from our home page

WET Trustee Rob McPherson is working on a project which will soon see a further 20,000 digitised pages of the Ellesmere Guardian available to view free of charge, as part of the Papers Past project.

The “Guardian” was published at Southbridge and then Leeston twice weekly from 1880 until 1974, when it became a weekly until it ceased publication in 1981. Circulating throughout the then Ellesmere County, it provided detailed reports on all aspects of rural life and of its many townships. Also recorded were developments and changes in governance, infrastructure and industry.

The National Library of New Zealand has responsibility for the Crown’s documentary heritage collections. To this end, it is undertaking a “Papers Past” project to permanently record and make available past newspapers by digitising pages of interest. Fully indexed and searchable, it is freely available online. To date, there have been over a million pages from more than fifty newspapers digitised.

Interest from WET and others in indexing the Ellesmere Guardian saw available copies of the paper’s initial years to 1906 being digitised late in 2008. This was done with widespread support and financial contributions coming from the National Library, Lincoln University Library, Christchurch City Library, Selwyn District Council and WET.

Now WET is partnering the National Library to coordinate the considerable interest in digitising some 20,900 pages of the Guardian, up to the end of 1945, that will provide ready access to a rich source of material from the activities of Ellesmere’s communities. This includes two World Wars, the Spanish ‘flu epidemic, the Great Depression, technology changes such as the impact of the internal combustion engine, as well as a myriad of social activities. The period involves copyright issues but The Press and Fairfax have generously given permission for this to happen.

Costs are considerable but with the continued support of the organisations already involved and others, including the Ellesmere Historical Society, we are confident these can be met. The project is well underway with plans for the new material to be available around March 2011.

The digitised copies of the Ellesmere Guardian which are currently available (1891-1906)  can be accessed by visiting the website of the Papers Past project.

Waihora Ellesmere Catchment Riparian Restoration Programme

Following the Living Lake Symposium in 2007, there was general agreement that riparian, or water edge, planting with natives would be beneficial for the different values of the Lake and catchment. With a track record of successful projects, WET successfully sought funding to implement an extensive programme of riparian planting.

In addition to support we receive from Environment Canterbury, Selwyn District Council and others, funding for the riparian restoration programme has come from the Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry Sustainable Farming Fund (funding over 3 years until June 2011) and the Ministry for the Environment’s Sustainable Management Fund (funding for one year to October 2010).  We also secured funding from WWF and DoC for restoration of Canterbury mudfish habitat.

WET has worked collaboratively with landowners and others including ECan, SDC, Ngai Tahu, DoC, Fish & Game, MAF, MfE, community organisations, streamcare groups, businesses, schools, research organisations and volunteers. Over the last 2 years in excess of 50,000 native plants have been established at over 20 different sites. WET will work with landowners to ensure projects receive ongoing maintenance until they are self supporting.

As part of the restoration programme, and in conjunction with a number of other parties, we have identified some priority catchments, where we are particulary keen to focus attention.  These are: Hororata, LI/LII/Liffey, Waikekewai, Kaituna, Johnsons Rd, Waianiwaniwa, Silverstream, and Leeston.  WET will also continue working in the Halswell catchment.  Contact us if you would like advice and assistance with finding funding for site preparation and planting of appropriate native species.

You can also download our information pack, a  series of information sheets, here (1.6MB).

For all the sites we have been involved with, plant communities have been designed to suit the specific location and to perform a range of functions:

• protecting and stabilising stream banks
• reducing erosion
• allowing flood waters to pass freely
• creating shade, which reduces weed growth in waterways
• improving water quality – a buffer between land use and waterways traps sediments and nutrients
• improving stream health
• enhancing biodiversity by providing corridors for wildlife

The Old Tai Tapu Road streamcare group and the planting at Osterholts Rd is an example of a restoration project carried out as part of this programme.

The extensive riparian planting and other work carried out at Mitchell’s Rd to protect the endangered the Canterbury mudfish was also part of the programme.

Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere State of the Lake

Edited by K. Hughey and K. Taylor, published 2009.

This publication, produced with assistance from the Biodiversity Advice Fund, Environment Canterbury, Department of Conservation, Fish & Game NZ, Selwyn District Council and Christchurch City Council,  draws together the key findings of the Living Lake Symposium held in 2007. The chapters can be downloaded here.

Lake Access Brochure

This brochure, published in 2008 with assistance from the Biodiversity Advice Fund and Environment Canterbury, provides an overview of the ecology, recreational use, Lake management and history of the Lake.  A map of the Lake indicates the key access points, roads, tracks and reserves.  The brochure can be downloaded here (2MB), and is also available from  libraries or by contacting us.

Waihora Ellesmere Trust facilitates the Statutory Agencies Group for Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere. The Group is made up of representatives from Environment Canterbury, Selwyn District Council, Christchurch City Council, Ngai Tahu, the Department of Conservation, the Ministry of Fisheries, Fish and Game, and Lincoln University. The Group’s role is to develop and implement an integrated approach to the overall management of the Lake and its catchment.

WET has also been successful in obtaining further funding to restore a Canterbury mudfish site. This funding runs for two years and is supported by World Wildlife Fund and the Community Conservation Fund (DOC).