We continue to be guided by our mission for Whangārei Heads to be free of invasive exotic plants that threaten the natural systems and the indigenous ecology of the area.
Aligned with this mission we became a Charitable Trust and renamed ourselves Weed Action Native Habitat Restoration Trust. This name reflects what happens when environmental weeds are removed. WANHRT takes a landscape level approach to environmental weed management across the 6400 ha of the Whangārei Heads peninsula.
The Northland Regional Council provide core funding for our work with landowners and a submission to the Whangārei District Council Long Term Plan guaranteed us $15,000 per annum for the next 3 years for work on WDC reserves. Jenny Lawrence supported us to gain additional funding from Lottery Environment and WDC – Covid Relief funding for our work on Reserves and Public Conservation Land while also enabling us to train a team of environmental weed contractors from Ngātiwai through the Waka Hourua partnership. Through this partnership we have invested over 500 contractor hours back into PCL’s and Reserves.
8 Weed Action volunteer groups work across the Whangārei Heads and their commitment and support provides the backbone for the restoration of our native habitat.
The Parua Bay Privet Buffer has had a boomer year with 410 contractor hours and 595 landowner hours supporting the removal of tree privet.
Weed Action has facilitated 121 Weed Action events with 4314 volunteer hours extrapolating financially to $107,850. We have fundraised and received an additional $82,160.
Our respected Coordinator, Kelly Maxwell resigned this year, her knowledge and skill will be missed. We appointed Wendy Ambury to provide operational oversight, Mike Urlich as Projects Coordinator, Jan Marshall continuing to Co-ordinate the Parua Bay Privet Buffer and Patricia Santos will manage our volunteer events.
We want to send our sincere thanks to the many volunteers, landowners, committee members and our supporters on council who get behind the work we are doing. Together we are making a difference and it is heartening to witness our forests being restored.
Weed Action Team
