Tukutuki Land Care (TLC), a farmer-led collective, has been allocated $970,000 by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) over the next three years to work with sub-catchment groups of the Tukutuki, enabling funding and action to benefit the region.
TLC will work with 17 catchments in Central Hawke’s Bay, covering 216,000 ha of private land, made up of nearly 1000 farms surrounding Waipukurau, Waipawa, Takapau, Ongaonga, Tikokino, Otane, Elsthorpe, Omakere and Ashley Clinton.
The group was officially launched on 17 May 2023 at the Takapau Town Hall, where the TLC Committee, along with local farmers, iwi, conservationists, sub-catchment representatives, HBRC and local and district councillors, welcomed the funding announcement made at the event by Alastair Cole from MPI.
“This funding will be used for an extension programme, knowledge gain, capacity building and coordination” said Alastair. “I would like to think that this is very much a partnership, and core to that is that we are here to actively support the conversations and the work ahead”.
Richard Hilson, Chair of the newly formed Tukituki Land Care, is involved with a number of catchment groups in the upper end of the Tukituki. “It became very apparent that there were a lot of really busy people, putting their hands up, but they were all time-poor and searching for a route through the mire of administration. They had no guidance and no money, there was a whole lot of folk putting in a whole lot of effort and they were getting bogged down”.
Representatives from existing sub-catchment groups, along with Richard Wakelin, then Senior Catchment Advisor at the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, took part in two facilitated workshops last year and the consensus was that there was an appetite for an overarching group. A committee was formed and Tukituki Land Care was created. The group will act as a “cohesive voice for the land”. They will provide a mechanism for collective activity that benefits the land across the Tukituki catchment.
“Ultimately, we want to take the pressure off people and get stuff done”. said Richard Hilson, speaking on Central FM last week. “If we can take some admin off people that is great, we can also find funding opportunities, we can take interesting stuff from one sub-catchment to the next and we can reach the whole community about things that are happening in one sub-catchment that might be applicable to another community or catchment. Those are the sorts of things we hope to do and eat the elephant just one bite at a time, not try and do the whole thing in one go”.
For further information please contact:
Michelle Goodman
Catchment Lead, Tukituki Land Care
tukitukilandcare@gmail.com | 0274749998 | www.tukitukilandcare.org
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