Our first event was a Wintering Field Day in June, where over 50 people visited two farms with different wintering systems.  The first farm had a focus on a block feeding kale system, buffer zones and a sediment trap, and the second was a generational wintering barn system.  We talked about how to manage environmental risks around wintering, and learnt some top tips for fencing and portable watering troughs.

In June that year we took part in a nationwide eDNA (environmental DNA) water quality monitoring programme (along with the other Southland Catchment Groups), to provide valuable information on the plants and animals found in and around New Zealand’s waterways. Our sample was taken from the Waianiwa Stream.

2021 and 2022 saw the group take a strong role in an Oreti Catchment Groups English as a Second Language in Southland Project (Understanding Our International Farming Communities), to scope and better understand how to support the adoption of good wintering practice in Southland when English is a second language for farm workers. We worked with Mid Oreti and Waihopai Catchment Groups and the two page project summary sheet can be found here.

These Catchment Groups will continue to work with their international farming communities and local stakeholders and agencies to find ways to develop and support the continued update of Good Management Practices on farms across Southland, and builder stronger, more diverse Farm Teams and Community Catchment Groups.

On the 20th July 2022 we had their first community meeting with a Know Your Catchment Issues & Actions Workshop. It was all about bringing locals together to get our Catchment Group off to a great start by better understand our catchment, identifying any issues, and figuring out our next steps as a group. We worked closely with local Environmental Consultancy Land & Water Science, who created a short easy to read handout on our Catchment Group area (which you can find on this webpage) along with a 30 minute video with extra information.

We followed this up in November with an evening event with Dr. Clint Rissmann, learning about possible mitigations that we could use on farm and across our catchment, and finished the year with a fantastic visit to Gavin Macpherson’s constructed wetland (covering 2 ha of a 115 ha catchment), followed by a Christmas BBQ & Lawn Bowls social.

2023 saw the group be a crucial part of the first Mid & Lower Oreti bus trip. We helped organise this trip and hosted two of the four sites visited – Gavin MacPherson’s constructed wetland and Marshalls Farm, and provided a delicious BBQ lunch. All seven Oreti Catchment Groups came together to organise and run this trip, and hope to run more in the future.

The group were asked to speak about the bus trip project at the April Thriving Southland Stakeholder Breakfast, and then organised three great field days to help share knowledge and ideas.

• The Stream Health Field Day was all about citizen science and learning about two easy ways to help understand the health of your streams – Rapid habitat Assessment and looking at the macroinvertebrates (the little critters that live in your streams). This was followed by a cuppa and a chat on water quality with DairyNZ Water Quality Specialist Justin Kitto. Many thanks to Environment Southland & DairyNZ who helped support this event.

• Wintering Field Day looking at a successful wintering system using a mixture of kale and multi species in a block grazing system with baleage as supplement. Many thanks to Graham Marshall, Gail Lilley and Georgie Galloway who organised and ran an excellent field day

• Understand NAIT traceability, animal welfare and how to protect your Primary Industry Evening – run with MPI NAIT & Animal Welfare, OSPRI, Datamars/Tru-test experts after locals told the Catchment Group they needed some tips and support with NAIT. It was a great evening, that could easily be replicated in other catchments.

Later in the year we joined a wetland identification project with our neighbour Lower Aparima Catchment Group, to understand how water moves through our catchment and where it collects to form “wetlands”.

The project came together with the creation of an online tool which gathers all this information, and gets people starting to think about their properties and what they can do to make the best use of the wet area and all the benefits they bring – water quality improvement, flood, drought resilience, carbon sequestration and biodiversity. This is still in the trial stage, and will be shared with the Lower Oreti Catchment Group community after it is finalised in 2024.

We finished the year by picking up our new Lower Oreti Catchment Group sign, purchased using BNZ Catchment Group Funding. Many thanks to BNZ and Lee Cowan for supporting this, and to Stacey, Georgie and Callum for their design ideas.