Three winters after Cyclone Gabrielle, Tairāwhiti landowners are working through the longer job of fitting land use to what their whenua can sustain.

Tairāwhiti Whenua Charitable Trust chief executive Hilton Collier says the trust has mapped its members’ land at a 1:3000 scale to understand where and how it is best used.

“We’re finding lots of cases of mismatch,” he says.

Collier says about 50,000ha of the 200,000ha is in forestry, and the work has identified the blocks it needs to deal with. He says that level of detail is largely absent elsewhere.

“Once you have good data, once you understand what the data is telling you, you can act. But without data, you are making the best decisions based on gut feel.”

He says plantations face relatively poor returns, squeezed margins and distance to the wharf, and some sit on country now described as a transition zone that needs to go back into permanent tree cover.

“How we go about it, how we fund it, of course, is a topic of much conversation.”

Collier says Minister Todd McClay has appointed a facilitator to look at how the government might support that shift.

He says farm balance sheets are in better shape, with red meat prices of $10/kg helping many of the farmers the cyclone devastated.

“They’ve been able to put more money into building resilience, fixing the bad things that happened during those adverse weather events.”

Collier says the recovery is uneven, and some remote areas still lack all-weather access and rely on river crossings.

“For those families, typically nearing the end of roads, that’s a major concern for them as far as being connected to the rest of the region and being able to go about their business normally.”

He says members are spread across the district and into Wairoa, where catchments are shared, and the largest has 40,000ha to manage.

“We agree on the problem, we agree on ways to move forward. Generally it tends to be an issue around how do we resource and how do we operate at scale?”

Collier says rural people should be able to reach services, even if that does not mean a sealed road to every driveway.

“We are a country of five and a half million people who live across 27 million hectares and we should be able to live where we choose.”

He says farmers cleared trees with tractors and carried medicines between settlements on quad bikes after the cyclone.

“When communities were cut off and isolated, they found the resources within themselves to provide the solutions and services they needed. They didn’t wait for Wellington to suddenly turn up and provide them.”

For landowners across Tairāwhiti, stay connected, share what is happening on your whenua and seek support early. For decision-makers, come here, listen to those living with these challenges, and back the solutions already being developed across our region.

To learn more about the work of Tairāwhiti Whenua, connect with the team or follow their latest updates at tairawhitiwhenua.co.nz

CountryWide CONNECT with Andy Thompson & Sarah Perriam-Lampp is our daily rural show livestreamed from 11am-1pm. Visit country-wide.co.nz on how to watch/listen or download the CountryWide CONNECT mobile app, available on Apple iOS and Android.