Rare Trip To Kahitatea Wetlands Attracts Crowd

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Annual World Wetlands Day celebrations in the Waikato demonstrated once again that bogs and swamps are as appealing as national forests, forest parks, off-shore islands or any other area of our country’s conservation estate.

More than 200 people took Saturday’s WWD field trip to the western side of the Kopuatai Peat Dome on the Hauraki Plains, aware that this was a rare opportunity to see a premier example of mature floodplain kahikatea swamp forest.

To experience its primaeval forest they walked for 20 minutes along the Waitoa Canal’s stop-bank, before dividing into two groups of a 100 or so each, taking turn about to remain by the canal for fish ecology talks by DoC and Fish & Game NZ or to wend their way into dense swamp forest with wetlands ecologist Keith Thompson.

Ranging in age from 10 year-olds to many well over seventy, all determined to experience this ancient world, they followed a temporary track leading through head high glyceria swathed the day before and undulating underfoot, sometimes plunging knee-deep into thick mud, and clambering carefully over the kahikateas’ enormous buttress roots lying half-hidden amongst dense swards of Carex sedges and native bush rice grass.

In the cool shade of 250-year old trees whose canopy arched 35 metres above them, with fantails flitting amongst filtered light, they listened to Thompson, aka the ‘bogman,’ explain the swamp forest’s unique and finely balanced ecology.

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Most of the vast Hauraki kahikatea stands that so impressed Captain Cook were cleared when drainage of the Plains began under the Hauraki Plains Act of 1908, but the 18ha Kopuatai stand remained untouched because of its inaccessibility on the eastern side of the Waitoa and Piako Rivers.

In addition, because the waters of the Waitoa Canal are backed up by tidal influences right up to the kahikatea stand, the forest’s flooding regime is still intact and standing water persists in much of the forest throughout the year.

Wetlands, a general term for areas where water is the primary factor controlling the environment, include streams, swamps, bogs, lakes, lagoons, estuaries, mudflats and flood plains.

They were once a widespread feature of the Waikato landscape, particularly within the lower Waikato Basin and Hauraki Plains, although today less than 20 percent of the original freshwater wetlands remain.

The day concluded with talks and displays on the proposed National Wetlands Centre, currently in design development for its Rangiriri site, and with a barbeque lunch served by the Waikato Branch of the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society at the Rangiriri Hotel Garden Bar.

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Three of the six wetlands recognised as being internationally important in New Zealand are found in the Waikato region. Two of these – Whangamarino and Kopuatai Peat Dome – are freshwater wetlands and the Firth of Thames is tidal. They are listed under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, an international treaty administered by the Ramsar Secretariat hosted by the World Conservation Union.

Fish & Game NZ is the lead agency for WWD, but as in previous years the WWD event in the Waikato was a collaborative effort between Fish & Game NZ, the National Wetland Trust, DOC, Environment Waikato and Mighty River Power.

ENDS

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