Coming up three years old, the Foothills Catchment Group is building a strong base of environmental knowledge to assist our future aspirations.

The dozen or so landowners who make up the group from Mt Somers to Mt Hutt recognise working together on environmental stewardship is the best option.

It’s all about effecting change on a larger scale than what any of us could do alone.

One of our flagship projects is our water quality testing programme.

For two years now, the group has sampled streams flowing out of the hills to get a handle on how they are faring. With support from the Mid Canterbury Catchment Collective (MCCC), we have funded quarterly testing of seven waterways.

Facilitator Chris Gibbs independently takes water samples and sends them to Hills Laboratory for analysis. A new development this year has been the loan of a nitrate probe from MCCC.

This is allowing us to save on the costs of analysis as we see the ‘real time’ results. The combined data being collected will ultimately allow the group to understand the bigger picture.

While we need several years of sampling to fully analyse trends, it’s a start, and a dataset that the group is very proud of. We would like to acknowledge support we have received from the Hekeao Hinds Water Enhancement Trust which guided our monitoring approach and analysis.

Planting of waterways also carried on this year with work happening on individual properties and alongside Staveley Stream. A native planting workshop held at the Staveley Hall in June threw a spotlight on the excellent work landowners in the area are contributing to local biodiversity.

Planting of the catchment has been greatly assisted by donations of plants from Synlait’s Whakapuāwai initiative.

Coming into our third year, it’s a good time to reflect on the different visions landowners hold for the Foothills and how we can help them create their desired future.

The group has now got to the stage where members are starting to think strategically about the various sub catchments along the Foothills, and how we can best accommodate them.

The initiation of the Mt Harding Creek Catchment Group, downstream of our group, presents an opportunity for landowners at the Mt Hutt end to mutually discuss issues affecting the creek.

There are also areas of overlap with the Ashburton Forks Catchment Group for landowners at the Mt Somers end. It’s a dynamic space and we are fortunate to have MCCC acting as a conduit and enabler for these conversations.

What we are seeing nationally is that catchment groups are becoming even more important. Across Government, supplier-led organisations, and within our markets, there is growing interest in how catchment groups deliver sustainable outcomes.

While we have been reliant on word of mouth to attract new members and tell our story, we now need to do better at promoting the Foothills Catchment Group to not only our own members, but the wider community and those landowners who are still considering joining us. If we are to bring the next generation of catchment group members onboard, they need to understand why working together is the only way forward.

For any enquiries about the Foothills Catchment Group, please contact facilitator Chris Gibbs on [email protected] or 021 317 669.

By David Acland, Chairperson, Foothills Catchment Group