Wairau Nature Network

05/10/2026

We joined the fabulous team of the South Marlborough Landscape Restoration Trust on one of their volunteer days up the Leatham. Despite the hard mahi, and the sea of wilding pines, it felt good to be doing something about this massive environmental problem. Turn the audio of and enjoy!
The next volunteer day is 8th November; head along and join them, all abilities catered for.

The South Marlborough Landscape Restoration Trust is working to res...

02/10/2026

It's that time folks! Time to pop your head above the parapet and put your project forward for the Marlborough Environment Awards. Why? It helps motivate, inspire, inform and celebrate enviromental work and a chance for everyone to say "good job!". We KNOW there are many fabulous projects in the Wairau Catchment!

The Port Marlborough - Marlborough Environment Awards are held every two years to showcase businesses or community projects that are good for the environment. Marlborough Environment Awards Trust.

29/09/2026

A recent hike up the Wakamarina was pretty depressing.

The beech forests of the Richmond Ranges were never going to be bursting with biodiversity like our naturally rich podocarp lowland forests. But the barren understory was confronting.

For much of the walk, the odd grey warbler was the only birdlife we encountered. Beneath the majestic beech, there was little growing except unpalatable peppertrees/horopito. A few dead Powelliphanta shells showed what should and could be living there

Goats, deer, pigs, rats and possums are steadily removing the plants, seedlings and wildlife that should be living beneath these forests.

Those magnificent old trees won't live forever. Without regeneration, there is no next generation of forest.

It’s election time. It’s the time to ask our candidates what they will actually do to protect and restore them. Because once these giants are gone, we can't simply plant them back.

23/09/2026

Next in our working group profiles is Rob Besaans. Rob first connected with the Wairau Nature Network after hearing about our vision and offering to help create our Wairau EcoMap. It didn’t take long before we realised Rob’s skills, enthusiasm and shared vision would be a great fit for the working group and decided he should join us!

What inspired you to become involved in the Network?

I'm drawn to people and initiatives that set out to create massive change in the world. The sheer scale of the Network is inspiring, but what really gets me is the bold, ambitious people behind it who believe we can make that change happen. They make me believe it too. We need a bit of crazy ambition right now to create hope: hope that change is possible, and hope that we can turn the tide.

What’s the biggest environmental challenge you think the Wairau catchment faces right now?

A close friend told me years ago that the environment isn't actually an environmental problem – it's an economic one. I think that still holds. The political and economic climate is the biggest challenge, because it hits the funding that powers conservation and biodiversity mahi. So much of the planting, trapping and weeding relies on volunteers and grants. Finding a way for conservation to scale beyond sponsorship, philanthropy and volunteer effort is an ongoing challenge for the Wairau. And let's not discount Marlborough's roasty-toasty summers, which make for some very thirsty young plants!

Can you share a project or achievement from the network that you are most proud of?

I've been to countless environmental events over the years, but it wasn't until the team mapped restoration activity across the Wairau that I saw the full picture. The mapping has made visible all the amazing effort people are putting in across the catchment. It's also introduced me to projects I had no idea existed, which have got me so excited about the potential of our region.

How do you see the role of community partnerships in restoring and protecting local ecosystems?

People are at the heart of change - they’re the ones that make things happen. Win their hearts and you're halfway to lasting, intergenerational environmental change. Community partnerships are how we win those hearts, so to me they're essential.

What is your personal connection to the Wairau area - what makes it so special to you?

I stumbled into the Wairau quite by chance over a decade ago whilst on holiday, and it's grown on me the way a place does once you call it home. I love watching the mighty Wairau River carry enormous amounts of water from the mountains out to sea, and feeling the wind come down the valley at the start of spring. I love the crunch of frost underfoot on winter mornings and the long, hot, dry summers that ripen the grapes. More than anything, though, it's the community: people who pull together and make things happen fast. And the deeper you dig, the richer the stories you'll find woven into the landscape.

20/09/2026

Woodbourne Farm is a great example of what can happen when landowners commit to restoring nature for the long term - with two generations already involved, and a third soon to join them.

Join us as we tour their restoration projects and glean information from their decades of experience in restoring flood-prone riparian areas.

With Julie on our working group, filming this one was extra special!

Woodbourne Farm is a great example of what can happen when landowne...

14/09/2026

As part of our three-year birthday reflections, we created this wee video of some of the fabulous mahi happening in our network.

Make sure you turn the music up!

If you enjoyed it, make sure to check out the full interviews over on our YouTube channel.

Three years of people, projects, planting, learning, connecting — a...

13/09/2026

🎉 Happy 3rd birthday, Wairau Nature Network! 🎉

Three years ago today, we started with an idea and a bunch of passionate people who thought we could do something bigger by working together.

Our birthday celebration ticked all the boxes of what we set out to achieve: fantastic conversations, new connections and partnerships, inspiration from others, and a little bit of reaching for the stars!

A huge thank you to everyone who has been part of the Wairau Nature Network journey so far. You are what makes this network work.

We were lucky to hear from two fantastic speakers:

Mike Aviss from Marlborough District Council dug deep into the past in his talk “Looking Back to Move Forward”, helping us imagine what the Wairau lowlands might once have looked like. And it’s a sobering story - with very little original vegetation remaining, there are just seven pre-European-aged kahikatea trees left on the lowlands. Seven. That really brings home how much has been lost.

Robbie Holdaway from Mount Impey Conservation Estate then blew us away with what can be achieved when you combine vision with intensive management. Across 3,000 hectares of remnant and regenerating forest, the family-run project is restoring an incredible landscape - one that absorbs an estimated 7% of Marlborough’s viticulture carbon emissions, and tomtit are now fighting over territories!

Here’s to the next three and to seeing just how far we can take this.

Many thanks to our event sponsors Small Town Winery and Marlborough District Council

09/09/2026

The best time to pick an expert’s brain is when they’re stuck in a vehicle with you!

W**d expert Ben Minehan from W**d Solutions suffered through our 30-minute return car ride, and by the time we arrived, we’d not only got him agreeing to help us water our trees with his pump this summer… we’d also picked his brain about tree release.

If you're choosing chemical over manual tree clearance, then apparently, Gallant Ultra is the herbicide of choice for stopping rank grass from smothering your newly established trees - and now is a good time to be thinking about that wee job.

The clever bit? Gallant Ultra targets monocots (ie. grasses), so your trees and any clover growing around them should be safe. And clover is worth keeping: it fixes nitrogen and provides a protective layer over the soil, helping reduce moisture loss.

Sounds almost too good to be true? Well… there is one catch. 😬

Gallant Ultra is eye-wateringly expensive at around $380 for 1 litre. But you only need about 12 ml per 10 litres of spray, which we reckon could treat around 500 trees (very rough guide).

His other tip was to add an adjuvant such as Uptake to help break down the waxy cuticle on the grass and improve the herbicide’s effectiveness.

So, if you’ve got a few neighbours doing tree planting too, it might be worth pooling your resources.