Project Updates

“The Willow Pond” located on the Upper Waikato River, right bank adjoining Vaile Road has been renamed Hucks Wetlands after Mike Hucks a keen game bird hunter and advocate who passed away in 2008.  In 2006 The Wildflowlers Association was successful in securing a grant from the Waikato Ecological Enhancement Trust to restore water levels [...]

Fish and Game are currently overseeing an ambitious project to construct a new 24 ha wetland at Ohaaki on the Waikato River. It has been predicted by the year 2030, subsidence, as a result of geothermal abstraction by the Ohaaki Power Station, will be sufficient for the entire site to be covered by water from [...]

In 2008 WCEET confirmed part funding of NIWA’s fish passage project to install spoiler baffles in a 68 m long culvert under River Road, Hamilton to facilitate the passage of fish into Bankwood Stream. This supplements previous work where a fish ramp was installed for the overhanging culvert. The project is now complete and is [...]

In May 2009 a WCEET funded workshop of New Zealand experts was held to consider the feasibility (including possible designs) of pest fish barriers for installation at Waikato lowland lakes –with a particular view to testing a trial design at the outlet of the Lake Serpentine (Rotopiko) complex.  Nutrients, sedimentation and the presence of pest [...]

The Pukawa Wildlife Management Trust consists of a small number of dedicated residents who check rat and stoat traps on a weekly basis in the settlement of Pukawa on the shores of Lake Taupo.  The group have also established a comprehensive network of rat bait stations to assist in keeping rat numbers at a low [...]

Three Hundred dead predators and counting … This has being the success to date since Turangi business people lead by Garth Oakden, Nick Singers and Craig Morey set up the Blue Duck Project Charitable Trust to protect Blue Duck (or ”Whio”) on the Tongariro River.  This is a great local project which sets out to protect [...]

  Late in 2008 Barry Pope, manager of Moerangi Station was awarded with a Tongariro Taupo Conservation Award for the work which has been completed in planting the riparian sections of the station. Moerangi Station is located between Lake Otamangakau and Kuratau, and comprises a large part of the upper catchment of the Kuratau River. The award [...]

The Waimarino Wetland is located near Motuoapa and is part of the great South Taupo Wetland. With the aid of the grant from WCEET the Tongariro Natural History Society has been working on a trial eradication of various invasive species including Pines, some water weed species and the Grey (or Pussy) Willow, a species that [...]

In April 2007 local Kaumatua of the Maungatautari region were able to release three species of endangered whitebait into the inland ecological island thanks to the aid of WCEET and Waikato whitebait farmers Jan and Charles Mitchell. The Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust seeks to recreate, as much as possible, the ecosystem that once existed on [...]