About the project

A Catchment Condition Survey (CCS) provides baseline information about the condition of a catchment through the physical inspection of properties. By gathering this baseline information, decisions on what actions to take and where to achieve the best results can be identified and costed.

A Catchment Condition Survey was undertaken as part of the Mountains to Sea Project. This gave us a starting point and also provided information to inform the development of a Catchment Action Prioritisation Tool (CAPTure).

The CCS allows landowners to identify key ecological issues in a catchment, determine priority areas for mitigation and is relatively inexpensive to repeat to measure change.

The primary features assessed by the CCS were:

• stock access to waterways
• riparian vegetation type
• stock access to significant natural features
• land/riparian erosion

As a secondary focus, the following features were recorded during the survey if they were encountered:

• stream structures
• stream blockages
• weed issues
• threatened species presence
• any relevant landowner comments

A Catchment Condition Survey was also carried out for the Okarika Pocket transformation project in Wairua, Northland.

Benefits

• Inexpensive and quick to deliver
• Direct engagement with landowners increases awareness of environmental issues and gives context to their property being part of a catchment
• Involves physical inspection of properties meaning data is more detailed compared to a desktop mapping exercise
• Identifies priority actions - at both property and catchment scale
• Can be adjusted to target particular threats e.g. barriers to native fish passage
• Easy to repeat to measure change

Progress

• Agreement to test Waikato Regional Council CCS template
• Contractor engaged
• Permission obtained from landowners and field survey completed
• GIS data, summary map, and report provided to Living Water
• CCS used to inform individual Farm Environment Plans (FEPs)
• Data set incorporated into development of catchment prioritisation tool CAPTure
• Re-survey using drone over set photo points to monitor progress as and when required