Miraka-Tūaropaki Riparian Planting Event
The team from Tūoaropaki and Miraka cooking up a storm on the BBQ provided by Central Transport Ltd.
KGT were excited to get the opportunity to collaborate with Miraka, Tūaropaki Native Plant Nursery and rural schools at a riparian/ wetland planting site alongside the Mōkai Te Ure stream.
This collaboration with other organisations has enabled us to work in rural areas and strengthen community relationships. Whakamaru School and Tirohanga School joined us to participate in a riparian planting in Mōkai with Miraka dairy processing company and Tūaropaki native plant nursery. Approximately 75 tamariki from the schools joined together to plant 1500 native plants and trees in the riparian/wetland area alongside the Mōkai Te Ure stream. We were also supported by representatives from Waikato Enviroschools, Waimarino Restoration/Project Tongariro, and the Taupō District Council. The day concluded with a well-deserved sausage sizzle in the sunshine, courtesy of Miraka and Central Transport Ltd, and a beautiful waiata performed by Whakamaru school.
Prior to this planting day, our coordinators visited the schools to give presentations and lead hands-on experiments to show how wetlands protect us from flooding by acting like sponges, provide habitat for all our native species improving biodiversity, and purify our water by filtering out the sediment and impurities. We also looked at how plants on riverbanks can stabilise land, protecting the soil with their foliage and holding it together with their roots, preventing slips and erosion. On the planting day we were able to refer to these lessons and the tamariki could make connections between what they had learned in the classroom and what they were doing. They could see the value in the hard mahi and were proud to be improving their local environment for future generations.
Thanks to Tūaropaki plant nursery for all their support, to check out their amazing plants click here
We would like to also provide a special acknowledgement to Tūaropaki Native Plant Nursery for their generous donation of 1000 plants to be planted for our 2024 Greening Taupō Day event, and a further 100 plants which were given to schools and ECE centres for participating in our Greening Taupō Day competition. We really appreciate support like this from local businesses, as it allows us to run our programme.
