Progress being made with coastal planting

Waikato Coastcare’s winter planting season is underway with opportunities for community involvement up and down the west coast in coming months – including this weekend.

West coast co-ordinator Stacey Hill said real progress was being made with dedicated King Country groups who were working with nature rather than fighting against it.

This Sunday from 10am, a group of Kiritehere locals and other volunteers will look to plant 550 natives on the northern side of the river.

All are welcome to join the effort.

Stacey said the group had had great success in creating a strong foredune at Kiritehere, with the focus now primarily on the backdune area.

She explains that most of the sand on the King Country coast comes from Taranaki, which is why it is black.

As the sand moves north, it washes onto the beaches and is swept away again.

“We’re constantly seeing a take and a give through the sea.”

Stacey said it was natural that with really big seas, the waves would carve away some of the dune and deposit it on an offshore sandbank.

“When things calm down, that sand will come back.

“The waves will bring it back onto the beach, it’ll dry out, the wind picks it up and if we’ve got our native plants there – our kowhangatara [spinifex] and our pingao – then those plants grab it.”

Through that process, the dune is built back out.

When there aren’t any foredune plants to grab onto the sand, it continues moving north.

Stacey said it all worked well when there was a strong dune system in place.

“It’s all connected and we need to make sure that system works, by making sure everything is strong.”

At places like Kiritehere and Nukuhakari, the focus had shifted from building up a foredune to stabilising the sand that has carried on inland.

Protecting and restoring backdunes would stretch to the entire ecosystem there and could see the return of birds, insects and lizards.

Stacey said she had 1000 plants that could go into the Kiritehere foredune later in the season if they were needed.

“Why it’s important: if we don’t look after the sand and our dunes and our beaches, then we don’t really have much of a beach to play on,” Stacey said.