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Annual Reports
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Annual Reports
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GUARDIANS OF PAUATAHANUI INLET INC
ANNUAL REPORT JUNE 2011
INTRODUCTION
On behalf of the Committee it is my pleasure to report to you on the activities undertaken by members and by the committee in the past year.
Dominating our community activities for the year is the successful, and hopeful, completion of our 7th triennial survey of the intertidal cockle population of the Inlet.
Dominating our committee activities this year has been the continued development of our website, particularly an acceleration of its educational content. As reported below we now have an extensive set of activity sheets and units of study which have been well received by teachers and students. We were also asked to contribute a workshop on the use of the Inlet as a teaching tool to the National Primary Science Week. Wendy Edwards and Beverly Fairfax are to be heartily congratulated on both the quantity and quality of this effort.
Dominating our planning horizon for the future has been the imminent production of a comprehensive Porirua Harbour Strategy and Action Plan. This document is now in its preliminary draft stage. When complete and adopted by the Councils and the community it will set the parameters for all community input into care for the harbour and its catchment (including the Inlet). We welcome this widening of the vision and the integration of management and practical activities devoted to the health and welfare of the harbour. It is possible, however, that this will impact on our major activities of stream monitoring and the cockle survey as these may have to be modified to fit with the overall strategy and the specific actions necessary to achieve its aims. On the other hand, these actions may well provide further opportunities for GOPI to be involved in hands on action.
2011-2012 looks set to be an interesting year.
OFFICERS AND MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
The Management Committee for 2010-11 consisted of:
Chairperson: John Wells Secretary: Denis Fairfax Treasurer: Dick Fernyhough Membership Secretary: Janet Ryan Webmaster: Beverly Fairfax Committee: Wendy Edwards, Phil Hawkey, Angela Hunt, Susan-Jane Owen, Tony Shaw
COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES
2010 Cockle survey Our 7th triennial survey of the cockle population of the Inlet was successfully completed in the week 21-27 November. Our most grateful thanks are due to the 97 volunteers who came along and to the Pauatahanui, Plimmerton, Pukerua Bay and Whitby Residents Associations and to Plimmerton Rotary Club, who helped raise volunteers by advertising the survey to their members. NIWA's analysis confirms our impression from the raw data that the total number of cockles has not declined since 2007. But there may be some hope that the population has been steadily growing over the past decade. Cockles are not spread evenly over the Inlet shores. There are many patches where they are abundant and many where they are less common, even absent entirely. This 'patchiness' makes estimating the true size of the total Inlet population very difficult and results in the population size having to be expressed as a 'mean' number within a wide margin of error. In the chart below, the mean is represented by a black dot; the vertical line passing through the dot represents the upper and lower limits of the margin of error. For a mean value to be statistically significantly different from another mean, the two error bar limits must not overlap. The chart shows that there has been a steady increase in the mean value since 2001, with the 2011 mean being about 30% higher than that of 2001. Although the bar limits overlap, showing that the difference is not statistically significant, the trend is nevertheless encouraging. It can only be an informed guess that this trend may represent a real increase, but if the trend continues at the current pace, the 2013 survey may well reveal a true, scientifically acceptable increase. Stream monitoring Our quarterly monitoring of the conditions of the major streams that flow into the Inlet continued as normal this past year under the direction first of Ian Thompson and then Phil Hawkey. However, with the need to integrate all such programmes into the comprehensive Porirua Harbour and Catchment Management Strategy, our programme may need to be modified. We are currently discussing this possibility with Greater Wellington Regional Council
Inlet Clean-up day Our annual effort to remove rubbish from the Inlet shore was once again well supported by the community with 70 people turning out to collect up the usual assortment of large and small rubbish items that accumulate on the shore. This time it included about 30 tyres and a quantity of carpet. How can we convince people not to treat the Inlet as a dump for such items? Small stuff may get there by chance, but the big things must be being deliberately dumped. As in previous years the clean-up was a combined exercise involving Guardians, Keep Porirua Beautiful (KPB) and long-term sponsors Plimmerton Rotary and Mana New World. It is pleasing to note that KPB report an increasing willingness of the Porirua community to help out in this way to keep the Harbour shore looking good.
Annual Photographic Competition For logistical reasons this year's competition was postponed to early May from its previously usual time in March. This appears to have had no adverse effect, with 333 prints received from 56 entrants, including five in the Youth section (13-18 yrs) and eight Juniors (under 13). Our judge, Geoff Marshall of the Kapiti Camera Club, commented that "there were a number of high quality entries, with some superb images, particularly in the Nature and Scenic Impressions categories. I hope the entrants continue to get out and enjoy the beauty of the Pauatahanui Inlet, an area that we are all lucky to live near and have easy access to, and to make more compelling images of the Inlet". I am sure we would all agree with his sentiments.
We are grateful to Porirua City Library, Palmers Lifestyle Centre at Plimmerton, Whitby Mall and the Lighthouse Cinema at Pauatahanui for allowing us to display the winning photos on their premises. If you missed these opportunities to see them they are now on our website http://www.gopi.org.nz/2011-winning-photos/.
The competition would not have been possible without the continuing support of the Porirua City Creative Communities Fund and our commercial sponsors - Big Mac Slabs Furniture, Big Salami, Bright's Mitre 10, Café Vella, Colours Hair Design, Ground Up Café, Harvey Norman Porirua MegaCentre, Lighthouse Cinema Pauatahanui, Living HQ, Magpie, Mana Pharmacy, Mexted Performance Sports Surfaces, Mondo Espresso, Palmers Lifestyle Centre, Peppermill Delicatessen, Phejoa Design, Plimmerton Fish Supply, Plimmerton Motors, Plimmerton Taj, Ruby's Café, Scene@Plimmerton, Topor Bistro & Bar, Whitby New World, Whitby Pharmacy, Whitby Post and Bookshop.
IMPORTANT COMMITTEE ACTIVITIES
We continue to take an active role in the forming of this Strategy and its Action Plan. We have mainly been concerned in pressing for a high level of community input into its formulation and implementation, pointing out that this will require an extensive effort by the Porirua City and Greater Wellington councils to explain to the community why it is necessary, how they can assist directly and indirectly, and generally creating an enthusiasm to see the predicted outcomes. A draft for public consultation is expected to be released in August.
Porirua Harbour and Catchment Community Trust This Trust was formed early in 2011. Its function is "to promote the sustainable management of the Porirua Harbour and its catchment". As such it will keep a close eye on the formation of the Harbour Strategy and Action Plan and advocate for its rapid implementation. GOPI is a signatory to the Memorandum of Understanding that set up the Trust and we will give it all the support we can. PHACCT will have a representative from Ngati Toa and each of the three Councils (Porirua, Wellington City and Wellington Region) and 10 from the Porirua community. John Wells, our current Chairperson, has been appointed to the Trust, but in his private capacity and not as a representative of GOPI.
Inlet Pathway Progress, albeit slow, has been made on the construction of the section between Ration Point and Pauatahanui village. There has as yet been no consultation on plans for the next section, from Motukara Point to Camborne.
OUR WEBSITE AND ITS EDUCATION FUNCTION
Website The website continues to attract visitors and bring GOPI to the attention of an increasing local and international audience. In the past year, the site has received more than 3,500 visitors, over 60% of them first-timers. Most were from New Zealand, but we also had significant numbers of site users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Malaysia, India, Brazil, Canada, Singapore and the Philippines. The site generated much interest in this year's photo competition over the period February to May. Interest in the cockle pages has been high, and through our website presence we've had enquiries on subjects as diverse as advice about walks around the Inlet, the best tide times for windsurfing and invitations to various conferences. The major area of current activity is providing access to the increasing number of educational resources we have produced and we're confident that this will be an area of growth in the coming year. Education This has been a very busy year for our educational resource writing team. We now have eleven activity sheets for class visits to the Inlet, and eight units of study in three series - Animals of the Inlet, Plants of the Inlet, and People of the Inlet. Sourcing high quality photos for these units of work has recently become a lot easier, with two of our photo competition winners offering to take photos for us. We are very grateful to Brent Higham and Charles Jarvie for these offers of help.
The feedback from teachers on our new resources has been very positive. Teachers appreciate the quality of the material and have told us that they like the flexibility that the resources offer. Some units are offered at two levels, while others can be adapted to suit different groups.
A new venture for us this year was to offer a workshop to local teachers as part of the Royal Society's inaugural National Primary Science Week. We saw this as an opportunity to show teachers how they can use the Inlet to fulfil their curriculum goals in both science and social science. We were pleased to be able to provide teachers with links to other resources, including the Living Waters documentaries produced by Cheryl Cameron and Matty Warmington on behalf of PICT. It is our intention to write extension materials for these documentaries as part of our school resources. These are very high quality documentaries and we are delighted to have them available. You can view the videos at www.livingwatersdoco.co.nz.
CONCLUSION In concluding I heartily thank all members for their continuing support and the committee for their hard work in sustaining our campaign of care for the welfare of the Inlet.
John Wells Chairperson June 2011
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