Whakaora Te Waihora: Ngāi Tahu and Canterbury Revive Lake Ellesmere

Te Waihora / Lake Ellesmere is a large shallow coastal lake south of Christchurch, historically the richest mahinga kai — food-gathering place — in Ngāi Tahu territory, before wetland drainage, nutrient runoff from intensive dairying and sediment turned it turbid and eutrophic. In 2012 Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and Environment Canterbury formed the Te Waihora Co-Governance Group, a rare arrangement in which iwi and a regional council hold joint authority over a catchment's restoration rather than the council consulting the iwi. The Whakaora Te Waihora programme it directs has planted over 350,000 native plants, re-established two wetlands — Te Repo Ōrāriki and Whakaora Te Ahuriri — and rebattered 21.3 kilometres of waterway banks to cut the sediment load reaching the lake. A Kids Discovery Plant-out has brought more than a thousand schoolchildren into the planting, on the principle that restoring the lake's mauri means restoring the community's relationship with it.