It’s been rough waters for catchment groups across the country, including our Mid Canterbury teams.

The recently-created Aotearoa New Zealand Catchment Communities (ANZCC) have been travelling the South Island to meet with local groups and update them on what’s happening at a national level.

Chairperson Ben Ensor, a sheep and beef farmer from Cheviot, said the meetings he’s had have gone well so far.

He'd met with a group in Alexanda for the Otago region, and met with Southland teams in Invercargill.

“And we’ll be in the North Island [this] week.”

The group represents 212 catchment teams nationwide, acting as their voice at a government and industry level.

It’s just over a year old and was born out of a necessity to organise, Ensor said.

“There’s been an amazing growth of catchment groups in this country, as you’ve seen in Mid Canterbury too.”

“With that, there was no collective way for those groups to communicate, and it’s very difficult for even the government or other stakeholders to talk to them.”

He said a large number of new catchment groups have been kickstarted with government money - things like the Jobs for Nature fund come to mind - and a lot of those funding pools are coming to an end.

For the short period of time they’ve been operational for, Ensor said good progress has been made.

Mid Canterbury is home to ten catchment groups, with the newest of the lot being the Greenstreet crew who formed after their council battles that led their creek to run dry.

We have a regional body, the Mid Canterbury Catchment Collective [MCCC] who was created for similar reasons to the ANCC - to share knowledge and resources, and pitch for regional funding.

What are catchment groups?

Catchment groups are teams of people, often farmers and landowners, who work to improve the health of the land they’re on - whether that’s bettering river water quality, or increasing the diversity of plants and animals around them.

These groups replant waterways with native bush, test rivers for nitrates and put up pest fencing at their own expense.

“Catchment groups do two things,” Ensor said; “ they help farmers understand the effect they have on the environment, and give them tools to address that.

“And they do it in a way that’s non-threatening and gets people on board.”

Ensor said farmers have always worked to better the land in some way.

But with an increase in regulations and monitoring bodies, catchment groups also help to break down what the rules mean when applied to the real world.

“It’s a pity we sometimes don’t have a good understanding between urban and rural, but generally, when you all get around those meeting tables, everyone wants the same thing.

“They might have different perceptions on how we get there,and how fast we should get there, but the direction’s not hard to agree on.

“That’s part of our challenge, is to help communicate that.”

by Anisha Satya