Water connects everything: people, whenua, animals and ecosystems. Whatever happens on the land ends up in the wai - sediment, nutrients, dung, runoff. The state of your streams is an honest report card on the whole farm, and healthy wai supports stock health, whānau wellbeing and the mauri of the whenua downstream.
Walk your waterways in both dry weather and just after rain - the difference between the two tells you the most.
Your ticks are saved on this device, so you can check things off as you go.
Start at the biggest source of sediment or stock contact you found on your walk - that's where a small effort buys the biggest gain.
Plant banks in natives like harakeke, tī kōuka and carex. Roots knit the bank together, foliage shades and cools the water, and the strip filters what runs off the paddock.
Fence wetlands out and let them do their job. A protected wetland traps sediment, strips nitrogen, buffers floods and becomes habitat for manu and īnanga.
Fencing stock out of streams is the single fastest water-quality win on most farms - less E. coli, less sediment, intact banks, and healthier stock drinking from troughs.
Trace where water flows in a downpour. Grass buffer strips, sediment traps and well-placed culverts catch soil and nutrients before they reach the wai.
Keep fertiliser well away from waterways and never spread before heavy rain. Nutrients that leave the paddock are money in the stream - and algae downstream.
Gullies, swales and boggy hollows carry most of a paddock's runoff in a small area. Leave them ungrazed and unfertilised in winter and you cut losses out of all proportion to the area retired.
Tap a practice to see how and why it works.
The assessments and practice guides that support Wai Ora live in our resources library.