Peat Lake Powwow Report.
Forty eight people attended a successful Peat Lake event on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 at the Sailing Club, Bank Road, Paterangi. The aim of the powwow was to share information about Lake Ngaroto and Shallow Lake research, look at current lake management and how best to engage the community in a Catchment-wide project.
Monica Peters, Regional Coordinator, NZ Landcare Trust set the scene by giving an overview of all the stakeholders around Lake Ngaroto and the different roles each play.
Dr Deniz Özkundakci, Post-doctoral researcher, Centre for Ecology and Biodiversity Research, University of Waikato gave a presentation on improving water quality using case studies from other Waikato Shallow Lakes and some deep water lakes outside the Waikato Region.
Tony Roxburgh, Manager, Community Facilities for Waipa District Council, spoke about the restoration of Lake Ngaroto. He detailed key achievements since the project began in 1995 with land retirement, fencing and riparian planting with natives.
Actions currently underway and proposed for the future include:
- Repair the circuit track and board walk/bridges
- Control willows to encourage more favourable indigenous species to colonise the margins (treatment started within southern sector)
- Replace collapsing manuka stand with more suitable species
- Ramp up the control of aggressive weeds
- Complete the application to renew the resource consent to operate the weir on the lake outlet.
Stuart Kneebone, Councillor for the Waipa – King Country Constituency for Waikato Regional Council spoke from the perspective of the Waikato Regional Council. New council directions were outlined given the recent change from Environment Waikato to Waikato Regional Council.
Information on two other catchment scale initiatives was collectively given by Monica Peters, Melinda Dresser and Nardene Berry, Project Coordinators for the NZ Landcare Trust, using examples from other projects.
A printed report has been produced providing further detail of the presentations and the outcomes from the event. This is available in pdf format from this webpage.
