Natural Restoration of the - People, Cities & Nature · • 4 year programme, 12% of 11ha • 7,000...

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Natural Restoration of the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor: Opportunities and Challenges

Evan Smith, Avon-Ōtākaro Network

Avon River Red Zone

• 5,500+ Homes

• 5+ years

Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor:

• 602 ha

• 11km

Avon Ōtākaro Network Vision

• 4 year programme, 12% of 11ha• 7,000 native plants• 3,250 vol hrs / $37k planting• 3,500 vol hrs / $25k maintaining• 1,500 pd hrs / $45k coordinating• c40 events (incl 5 major)

= c$100k/ha, $10/m2June 2019

Lessons learned• Restoration Challenges• Collaboration Challenges

Acknowledgements

Avon Ōtākaro Forest Park, Travis Wetland Trust,Avon Heathcote Estuary Ihutai Trust, DOC Rangers,CCC Ecologists and Regional Park Rangers, Dr Colin Meurk, Di Lucas, Greening the Red Zone

Incredible Opportunity -Natural RestorationIn an Urban Setting:

200,000 trees

Lessons learned• Restoration Challenges• Collaboration Challenges

Acknowledgements

Avon Ōtākaro Forest Park, Travis Wetland Trust,Avon Heathcote Estuary Ihutai Trust, DOC Rangers,CCC Ecologists and Regional Park Rangers, Dr Colin Meurk, Di Lucas, Greening the Red Zone

The Challenges: Ecological Authenticity

• Ecological Authenticity

• Methodologies• Nursery Services• Pest & Weed

Management• Resilience to SLR

& Climate Change• Community

Engagement • Economics• Logistics• Collaboration &

Integration• Governance

What does this mean in an environment transformed by a couple of • centuries of land clearance, drainage and

urbanisation, • minutes of intense seismic activity, • decades of infrastructure regeneration,

and • centuries of future climate change and sea

level rise?

The Challenges: Restoration Methodologies

Orchard et al (2017)

• Engineered Ecosystems• Evolving Ecosystems• Naturally Regenerating Ecosystems----• Community participation vs professional

implementation • Aesthetics: evolving wilderness vs manicured

ecosystems • Large scale sites to reduce edge effects.

The Challenges: Nursery Services

Nursery services:• Sustainable enterprise model; • Ecologically authentic;• Not undercut by community efforts;• Established but scalable; • Planned lead-in time; • Making the most of training and employment

opportunities; • Benefits vs costs of local, professional expertise.

The Challenges: Pests and Weeds

• Discouraging the invasive exotics; • Encouraging the indigenous;• Sustainable vs pragmatic controls; • Impacts of logistical sequencing: stopbanks;• Drainage vs ecological priorities.

The Challenges: Resilience to SLR & Climate Change

• Allowing room to flood; • Allowing room for

ecosystem migration Upstream;

• The importance of intermittent flooding to sustain some ecosystems.

The Challenges: Community Engagement

Everyone wants to plant – but: • quality control; demand vs supply• integration and planning;• maintenance first 5 years; • accurate costing of volunteerism?

Harnessing the passion while:• nurturing the technique; • fostering the science; • teaching our kids;• strengthening community; and • sustaining commitment.

The Challenges: Economics and Funding

• Cost of plants, ancillaries, volunteers, maintenance; • Cost and timing of enabling infrastructure work;• Reducing the cost to the public purse• Pressures to plant up to 50% fast-growing exotics:

o to harvest carbon credits, o to get timely canopy coverage and habitat,o to nurture underplanted natives;

• Undervaluing of wetland habitats in carbon sequestration;

• Inadequate economic quantification of ecosystem services.

The Challenges: Logistics and timing

• Sequencing of capital works programmes: o impacts site availability, o hydrology, o salinity,o soil, o exposure to weed infestation, o exposure to indigenous seed sources.

• Getting this right is crucial!

The Challenges: Collaboration & Integration

• Ensuring agencies communicate, collaborate and integrate:o internally and externally with each other, o especially when iwi, academia, CRIs, NGOs and community are

added into the mix;o dependency on relationships – succession and capacity issues;

• Overcoming risk averse bureaucratic process;• Need for culture of partnership and empowerment.

The Challenges: Governance

Need for an overarching entity with the power:• to lead, guide and approve;• to define agreed:

o strategic framework, o implementation strategies, o clear roles and responsibilities;

• to provide access to ecological, cultural and planning advice;

• to grant licence to experiment and innovate• to monitor and review…

Though the challenges are many, they are not insurmountable.

The opportunity to bring indigenous nature back into our city is just too great not to give it our best shot!

We owe it to our future generations!

Thank you!

Natural Restoration of the - People, Cities & Nature · • 4 year programme, 12% of 11ha • 7,000...

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