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We congratulate Cooks Beachcare on being awarded our Restoration Award this year. This award is kindly sponsored by Coastlands Plant Nursery. It was reported in a newspaper article in the Mercury Bay Informer.

Here is some detail of what the group has been up to since its inception:

Around 2010 a group of local residents of Cooks Beach became concerned with the state of the dunes along the foreshore of the beach. Noxious plants, garden “escapees” or dumped rubbish had become rampant and were threatening the health of the dunes and their native plants.

Cooks Beach is about 2kms long and the initial focus of the group has been on the 1km of the dunes which lie between a local road and the beach.

So it began that on Thursday mornings a group of volunteers, whose numbers range from 1 to 12 and who have a fair sprinkling of grey hair, would meet and spend around 2 hours working on the dunes. We work from February to December, weather depending. However, our records show that from 2010 to 2015 we averaged around 600 hours per calendar year and from 2015 to the end of 2018 as our numbers grew the average hours increased to 1000 per calendar year. This equates over our “active” period to a contribution of some 7000 hours. At a charge rate of say $30 /hour the value of the contribution is given perspective.

The initial target was blue pea (Polygala fruticosa) which was of such a size that chain saws were necessary. Each year the group has worked the length of the 1km strip to the point where there are fewer and fewer blue pea plants each year with no plants now maturing to the flowering stage.

Of equal concern was agapanthus which was flourishing. In 2016 we obtained a grant from the DOC Community Fund for a three-year spraying programme which has reduced the masses of plants to a number which, after this year’s spraying, we will be able to maintain or eliminate by hand.

A DOC Community Day in 2017 saw 18 volunteers attacking ice plant, another wide-spread pest. From a strip about 30m wide and 60m deep plants were removed and when weighed at the Council dump totalled over ½ tonne. It quickly became apparent that this plant could not be practically removed by hand and our Council, recognising the problem, has made sufficient funds available for a two-year spraying programme which should see the ice plant eliminated or reduced to small patches which can be controlled by hand.

By hand weeding and spraying we have also attacked cotoneaster, ivy, agave, blackberry and gazania which were all present in significant amounts.

The positive aspect of our work has been successive annual planting programmes for which plants, mainly spinifex, pingao, club rush and muehlenbeckia have been supplied by Waikato Regional Council and Thames Coromandel District Council. Community planting days have been held and the public, school groups, students from a local foreign language school and “Keas” have joined our volunteers in planting in over 4,000 plants in each of the last three years.

As added activities of the group we have developed and presented a beach care and plant identification programme for a local primary school. In the nesting season members of the group are active in protecting the nests and young of dotterels and oyster catchers which are both present on our beach.

A recent highlight for us has been the disclosure that our beach is one of the largest and last locations on the Coromandel Peninsula for sand daphne or Pimelea villosa with natural patches now being supplemented by new plants. We are very proud guardians of this diminishing native plant.

We have not been as good at the before-and-after photos as we should have been but as we gather each week and find fewer and fewer pest plants and can see the growth of the planted areas there is a pride and satisfaction in what we are achieving.

We have been fortunate to have had Jim Dahm as our consultant and adviser and our relationship with and support from WRC, TCDC and DOC has allowed a good successful working partnership to develop and flourish.

The group maintains a website at cooksbeachcare.org.nz which shows our activities. Go to “Our work” and click on “ more information” on any of the activity panels to bring up the supporting photographs.

Kedron Parker is a Wellington based artist exploring nature in the city.

Her practice is collaborative and includes the audio installation Kumutoto Stream, The Wet Index with Bruce McNaught, the Water Sensitive Urban Design Study Group, Hello Pigeons with Adam Ben-Dror, the Aratoi installation Sanctuary, and the ongoing environmental restoration project Inanga Love Park founded with Paula Warren and Stu Farrant in 2017.

She is currently studying at the Massey University College of Creative Arts (CoCA) to further develop her artwork about Inanga Love Park. The Coastal Restoration Trust has provided a donation of $1000, funded largely through a generous gift from Brew Moon Brewery in Amberley, to support her study and further this work.

Inanga Love Park is a public art installation with an aim of raising awareness about the importance of the ecology of the Korokoro Stream near the foreshore, and the critical role that area plays for our native fish.

Like so many streams across New Zealand, the Korokoro is crossed by roading and transport infrastructure and culverted in its final stretch to the sea, precisely in the area of the salt-water wedge, where native fish including inanga (whitebait) typically breed.

In 2016, Kedron, ecologist Paula Warren, and ecological engineer Stu Farrant came together with curators from the public art organisation Letting Space to rehabilitate this area of the Korokoro, using the tools of art, landscaping and placemaking to create the Inanga Love Park.

Along with a growing list of collaborators, the Inanga Love Park team is looking to “create the conditions for love” and encourage inanga breeding once again in the Korokoro.

It was audacious to call it a “Love Park”. Squeezed between the Petone exit ramp, the motorway and the train tracks, and bordered by industrial development, this stretch of the lower Korokoro was for many years a trashed out gully. This part of the stream was used as a dumping area, full of glass, beer cans, industrial and roading refuse.

With her experience in placemaking and environmental restoration, Paula Warren led a transformation of the site.The stream area has been weeded and planted with natives, the area has been levelled, and rubbish and roading trash hauled away. The surrounding areas, which had been unsightly and dangerous, have now been transformed into a park for people, and a place to visit the stream.

Poster installations interpret the site. It has a rich history, from Maori times through to European settlement.

Inanga Love Park was launched in February 2017 at the Commonground Hutt City Public Art Festival, with a permanent mural by Toothfish, as well as a large poster paste-up about the stream, all visible to those passing the area by foot or by train.

The native grasses and trees on the banks of the stream are looking great. Whitebait Connection has just conducted its second inanga egg hunt with local volunteers - sadly, inanga eggs have yet to be found at the site. Efforts will continue, however, as local interest has blossomed with the Korokoro Environmental Group providing stewardship and a new native garden area adjacent to the site.

The art continues as well - including Parker’s ongoing paste-ups, and a large photographic triptych about her experience at the site which was shown earlier this year in the Shared Lines: Kaikoura Arts Festival and subsequently at the Christchurch Art Centre.

Parker is also collaborating with photographer Victoria Saunders to develop a five minute mini-doco about Liz Mellish and Morrie Love’s experiences and knowledge of the Korokoro Stream, its natural history, the Pa that once stood adjacent to the stream, and the Love Family’s former Marae overlooking the Korokoro.

Inanga Love Park is an example of how art and restoration can work hand-in-hand in engaging communities and enhancing ecological outcomes, especially for non-scenic sensitive environments.

Rising sea levels are a concern in many parts of NZ. Hawke’s Bay councils are looking at how to cope with the consequences, financially and structurally.

Read about it.

If you are involved with a coastal restoration group that you think is doing great work, or want to nominate a group or project that is, please nominate them for this award.

The Coastal Restoration Award recognises the team work and tenacity to motivate people to work together to achieve “on the ground” results. The award is generously sponsored by Coastlands Plant Nursery.

The nomination period for this award has been extended and will now close on 28 February 2019. Download the information and nomination form here in Word or PDF (PDF, 201.44 KB) format.

The effects of rising sea levels on local government infrastructure. Read the full report by Local Government NZ or read and watch a news item about it here.