Our Wai Connection team have been supporting the group with monitoring the water quality of the Takapu Stream and hope the students can join in on the awesome mahi that is happening in the reserve.
Our connectors and coordinators were teaming up this season with the exciting opportunity to work with the KETE - Kids Enhancing Tawa Ecosystems student leaders and the Willowbank Reserve Care Group.
KETE is a placed-based initiative in the upper Porirua/ Kenepuru Stream Catchment, connecting students from local schools into a wide range of taiao and kaitiakitanga initiatives. Led by Sue Lum from Wellington City Council, she has formed a group of passionate student leaders from the local schools who are keen to extend their learning and action into some freshwater monitoring! We taught the students how to monitor the clarity, temperature, flow, and macroinvertebrates in Te Kenepuru (Porirua) Stream at Grasslees Reserve and Willowbank Reserve.
As an added bonus, the students were also about to connect with the Willowbank Reserve Care group to discuss the mahi that they have been doing in this space and learn about their aspirations. We hope the students can join Willowbank Reserve Care on the awesome mahi they do within the reserve. The Willowbank Reserve Care group have worked hard to clear many invasive weed species within the reserve and replant the area with native species.
Our Wai Connection team has been supporting the Willowbank Reserve Care Group as they take part in the Porirua Citizen Science Program. We have provided monitoring training to help the group to monitor the water quality of the Takapu Stream. So far, we have helped them in completing three seasons of monitoring. Recently, we had the opportunity to spotlight and monitor the fish in the awa, offering an awesome learning experience for the community. The group discovered tuna, trout, and toitoi throughout the Takapu Stream, a magical night spent together in the awa.
This monitoring effort from both the students and the care group will be able to feed into the catchment wide monitoring program we are supporting with Porirua and Wellington City Councils. This data is being collated with other citizen science, council and Ngāti Toa Rangatira monitoring programs to inform a catchment report card which will be published in 2026.
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