Category: Environment Canterbury Regional Council

A south Canterbury community group has looped in help from an unlikely source to improve water and soil quality in their catchment, with four shipments of dung beetles coming to their aid.

While most people actively avoid creepy crawlies, Barkers Creek Catchment Group is shipping them in by the hundreds.

The local community group was allocated funding by the Ōrāri Temuka Ōpihi Pareora (OTOP) Water Zone Committee to support their project, a catchment-wide release of dung beetles which aims to bring long-term soil and water quality improvements to the Barkers Creek area, a sub-catchment of South Canterbury’s Waihī River. The next shipment of beetles is set to be released in coming weeks. 

Dung beetles and their role in agriculture

Dung beetles dine on the manure of grazing animals, including cows, sheep, alpacas and horses. The adults feed on dung before tunneling beneath the manure, then filling their tunnels with balls of dung, in which they lay their eggs. The piles of dung quickly disappear, broken down into the soils below.

By reducing run-off from paddocks into waterways, and with the nutrients being recycled back into the soil, water and soil quality is greatly improved, along with plant and animal health.

In most parts of the world, the beetles are strongly connected to livestock, but not here in New Zealand. Although we have native beetles, they have adapted to a forest environment and don’t provide any support in processing manure in our pastoral system.

Group Chair Danette McKeown said the beetles are a novel approach to an age-old problem for the small 34 sq km catchment, which is largely rolling terrain with heavy clay soils.

“Research shows they’re great on sloping land; they tunnel down so you have less dung to run off in a rainfall event, and they improve the structure of hard clays,” she said. 

It’s a long-term project, as it can take five to seven years to know if the colony has become established, but Danette said the benefits are wide-reaching for the greater catchment.

“It was a no-brainer for us. Water quality was one of our priority issues as a catchment, with sediment and nutrient run-off issues because of our rolling clay terrain,” she said. “We’re also aware the closer to the source, the cheaper and more effective the remediation. So, we were looking for ‘close to the source’ mitigations.

“Dung beetles are a passive solution, they keep working for us and we can then focus our attention and funds on other things, like riparian planting and fencing off waterways.”

Community group bringing catchment-wide benefits

The dung beetle project is the latest in a long raft of successful initiatives undertaken by the Barkers Creek Catchment Group.

Made up of local farmers, they initially came together seven years ago to collaborate with us and the OTOP water zone about Plan Change 7 of the Canterbury Land and Water Regional Plan.

Today their work is driving landscape-scale improvements to the wider catchment, with current and future projects that include:

• pest control
• trapping
• bat monitoring
• regenerating native bush blocks
• and creating corridors of native riparian planting.

“We’re focused on actions with good value,” Danette said.

“If we’re going to spend money undertaking work, we want to get the widest benefits we can, so we’re focused on projects that have more than one singular outcome.”

We can’t predict earthquakes, but we can prepare for them. Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Canterbury is preparing, with an inter-regional, multi-agency exercise based on a magnitude 8 Alpine Fault earthquake (AF8) on Thursday, 7 November.

With a 75 per cent chance of an alpine fault rupture in the next 50 years, preparation is critical.

Just like the public was encouraged to get in behind the national earthquake drill ShakeOut recently, CDEM Canterbury is also getting ahead of the game.

The next large alpine fault earthquake will challenge all of us. The better connected we are beforehand, the easier it will be to support each other during and after.

“Exercising is a core part of readiness by helping us to identify gaps and issues,” Team Leader Regional Emergency Management for CDEM Canterbury, Phill Mackay said.

“We’re able to integrate the learnings we identify into our plans and procedures post-exercise. This improves our ability to not only respond to but also recover from emergencies.”

Realistic practice ensures teams are prepared for emergencies

Scientific research indicates there is a 4 out of 5 chance the next alpine fault rupture will be a magnitude 8+ event. This will require a coordinated multi-agency response.  

Exercise Pandora will involve all the South Island Civil Defence Emergency Management Groups and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). It has been developed using the most up to date science we have available by partnering with the AF8 programme.

“Months of work has gone on in the lead up to this exercise to ensure the scenario is realistic, but also to ensure the stakeholders that would need to be involved in the event of an actual rupture of the alpine fault are involved in the exercise,” Phill said.

“Ensuring the scenario for the exercise is authentic gives us the greatest chance of truly identifying how and where we might need to develop our existing systems. In terms of response preparedness, that’s critical.”

How you can prepare for emergencies  

In Waitah/Canterbury, we are not strangers to emergencies, and we know they come in many different forms and are unpredictable.

Practicing your plan with your family, friends and community helps everyone understand what they can do to support each other in an emergency event.

Now’s a great time to get your whānau together and  

make a plan for emergencies . While having a plan is a great start, practising it together is even better!

Get ready for an emergency

Around this time of year, we get many calls complaining about smoky or smelly outdoor fires. To avoid complaints from your neighbours and a visit from one of our incident response officers, get familiar with the outdoor burning rules and consider alternatives to burning.

Under 2 hectares? You can’t burn outdoors

Remember that if your property is under two hectares (20,000 square metres), you can’t burn outdoors, even if you live in a rural area.

If your property is over two hectares, you can burn only paper, cardboard, untreated wood, and dry vegetation from your property and a neighbour’s property. Smoke must not cause a nuisance beyond your property boundary or be blown towards a township. If you live in a Clean Air Zone, you may only burn between 1 September and 30 April. For more information about the outdoor burning rules, visit our outdoor burning page.

Check it’s alright before you light

Before lighting any fires, visit checkitsalright.nz to find out whether your area is in an open, restricted or prohibited fire season and what you should do to keep yourself and others safe.

Rubbish fires are a no-go

No matter how large your property is, you must not burn rubbish. Burning rubbish causes toxic chemicals to be released into the air and creates a health hazard as well as a nuisance for you and your neighbours. Materials that must not be burned in Waitaha/Canterbury include:

• plastic
• metals
• batteries
• painted or treated wood
• rubber
• coated wire
• oil
• chemicals
• tar and bitumen
• materials containing asbestos
• containers that have stored hazardous materials.

Plastic and wood can be disposed of with general rubbish, but batteries, paint and hazardous materials need to be taken to a transfer station. Visit your local council’s website to find out how to sort your waste and the location of your nearest transfer stations.

Of particular concern in the rural environment is the burning of bale wrap and other household rubbish. Bale wrap and other farm waste can be recycled through Agrecovery or Plasback.

Burn only dry organic material

“Burning wet organics, like freshly felled trees for example, generates much more smoke than a dry burn. That’s when you get thick, black smoke that causes a real nuisance to the surrounding community,” said compliance team leader, north, Brian Reeves. “The smoke contains small particles that can irritate the nose and throat and even have more serious health impacts over time.”

Outdoor burning rules state that the moisture content of any material being burnt must not be greater than 25 per cent.

Alternatives to outdoor burning

Consider smoke-free alternatives for dealing with your green waste. Garden waste can go in the green bin or the compost. Grass clippings and leaves can also be used as mulch in the garden.

Cooking outdoors is allowed

Whether you prefer a barbecue, pizza oven, hāngī or umu, you can cook outdoors as long as the smoke is not offensive or objectionable beyond your property boundary.

How to report outdoor burning

If smoke from outdoor burning is causing a nuisance for you, call us on 0800 765 588 (24 hours) or use the Snap Send Solve app to report an issue from your mobile phone.

Our Harbourmaster’s Office plays a key role in managing cruise ship activity across Waitaha/Canterbury.  

There are four places in Canterbury that get visits from cruise ship ships during the summer months – they are Kaikōura, Lyttelton, Akaroa and Timaru. 

Our team in the Harbourmaster’s Office are responsible for several functions including:  

• granting permissions to enter the Kaikōura and Akaroa anchorage sites
• enforcing speed and wake requirements
• maintaining communications with the ship as necessary.  

We also work closely alongside other agencies to ensure cruise ship operations are completed in a safe and coordinated manner.  

“This season, we have reduced the number of designated anchorages down to three in Akaroa harbour due to concerns about the environment and seabed,” said Guy Harris, Harbourmaster.  

“We have also further limited the maximum size of a cruise ships that may enter Akaroa without requiring a resource consent.”  

Working together to reduce cruise ship impact  

In partnership with the Department of Conservation, Christchurch City Council, and ChristchurchNZ, we continue to closely monitor cruise ship activity in Akaroa. 

Cruise ship visits in Akaroa have been a matter of community interest and discussion in recent years, with concerns raised over the number of ships visiting, potential damage to the seabed and safety.  

The reduction in cruise ship visits to Akaroa is consistent with the intent of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment 2021 report, which focuses on reducing the environmental footprint of the tourism industry.   

Limiting ship length and thruster use 

Information from a risk assessment in 2019 led us to limit thruster use by ships at anchor, to reduce the potential for seabed disturbance. A survey of the Akaroa Harbour in 2021 led us to close some anchorages and limit the size of ships coming into the Harbour from 260 lengths between perpendiculars (LBP) to 200m LBP. For a larger ship to enter it would need to get resource consent first. 

“A repeat survey of the open and closed anchorages in Akaroa was undertaken by Southern Hydrographic in 2023 with an additional survey planned for 2025.  

“This will help us determine the rate of physical recovery of the closed anchorages and inform future operational decisions,” said Guy. 
A total of 17 cruise ships are scheduled to visit Akaroa this season.  

Construction of a new Akaroa Wharf 

Christchurch City Council will soon begin work to rebuild the Akaroa Wharf. Construction is expected to get underway in late 2025 and be completed in 2027.  

Drummonds Jetty is currently being extended in preparation as a temporary replacement while the main wharf is constructed. The Harbourmaster’s Office team will be installing some channel marker buoys for vessels approaching Drummonds Jetty and have been working with Christchurch City Council on shifting some swing moorings to ensure there is a clear channel.