100 projects
Trying things out, costing them, and planning how to take them to scale
Living Water: Dairy and freshwater thriving together
Farming and freshwater thriving together
Living Water is a partnership between the Department of Conservation and Fonterra. We’re trialling tools, methods and approaches to enable farming, freshwater and healthy ecosystems to thrive side-by-side.
We’re working with farmers, scientists, councils, mana whenua and communities to design and test solutions to improve freshwater quality, and then sharing the results of our trials and research on this website.
Our mission
5 regions
Demonstrating dairying and freshwater ecosystems thriving together
1 mission
To build connections which can drive better outcomes for the environment, the economy and New Zealanders
Who are we
With nearly 40% of New Zealand’s land under our care, Fonterra and the Department of Conservation have joined forces to work on the farming and freshwater challenge.
We work on the ground, side by side. We share our expertise and use our collective strengths.
Where we’re working
How we’re working
1
Working towards a common vision of dairy and freshwater thriving together
2
Designing and trialling solutions in five catchments
3
Measuring the impact across 10 years
4
Scaling implementation — the process and cost per farm, per region and for New Zealand
5
Championing change — to mindsets, approaches, systems and aspirations
What we’re up to
We are doers, with the big picture in mind. Check out what we have been up to around New Zealand.
What needs to be considered to integrate forestry into existing farms?
We have a new project on the website: Integrating forestry and farming to help answer this. This project aims to provide resources and information to achieve the right tree in the right place for the right purpose 👇 https://bit.ly/3A1Qfap
Celebrating 8 years
We recently reached the 8️⃣ year milestone of working together 🤯 to drive change, find solutions to improve freshwater ecosystems and increase biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Read our update on what's been achieved to date. Department of Conservation @Fonterra https://bit.ly/3BQPf9K
We've updated our Physiographics Project
We've updated our Physiographics Project, head over to learn: 💧 What is physiographics and how does it work? 💧 Why Living Water invested in physiographics? 💧 Who could use physiographic information 💧 The BIGGEST lesson Living Water learned from this project 👉 https://bit.ly/3mJXpw0
It's O-Fish-ial, our Waituna Creek rehabilitation project is a success, the fish are hooked on their new homes!
We have to clarify this headline is a bit misleading, giant kōkopu have been found in Waituna creek before, just not in the study reach we were working in. But still an awesome result from a lot of hard work from the Department of Conservation, Fonterra and Cawthron Institute
Tools and solutions
Our projects, case studies, and resources
