Greater Wellington Partners with Million Metres for Stream Health

Greater Wellington Regional Council is celebrating a milestone with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Sustainable Business Network, which leads the Million Metres Streams Project designed to restore a million meters of waterways by 2026.

Million Metres is a national stream restoration programme that supports Kiwi communities to take care of their waterways, and central to the programme is its online fundraising platform where landowners and community organisations raise the funds they need to achieve waterways projects.

Million Metres makes it easy both for donors and those restoring waterways to connect to high quality native restoration opportunities which support Kiwis taking care of their rivers.

The tangible success measure of the scheme is to achieve a million metres of waterway restoration by 2026.

With the signing Greater Wellington has become a Field Partner, connecting landowners and community conservation groups with Million Metres, and offering expertise on freshwater environments and riparian planting.

Greater Wellington currently supports the riparian planting aspirations of landowners and community organisations through a number of internal initiatives, and collaborating with Million Metres helps build capacity around the region, as well as encouraging communities to get involved with restoration.

The first project Greater Wellington is partnering on with Million Metres is the long term plan to restore the Wainuiomata River at Baring Head. Baring Head is an ecologically significant area that supports many threatened species including inanga, long finned eel and the grey duck. Planting will create a buffer between the waterway and the land, filtering contaminants, reducing sediment loss, and providing habitat for these native fish and birds.

The Friends of Baring Head have completed two fundraisers with Million Metres this year. The first raised $4,800 and enabled 150 metres of Wainuiomata to be planted with over 1000 native plants and trees in 2018. The Garage Project, Green Cabs, Ricoh and Tonkin and Taylor have come on board as corporate partners – donating to the project, as well as each adopting a spot to plant up and take care of for several years to come.

Friends of Baring Head have just wrapped up their second fundraiser with Million Metres. They’ve raised $46,750, which will enable an additional 5,000 native plants to be established along Wainuiomata River in 2019.

ENDS

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