You manage what you measure – Baton residents measuring their awa

Baton Valley residents Ange Palmer and Cheryl Dean are helping look after the beautiful Baton River. They’ve started monitoring the health and characteristics of the river using a SHMAK kit (A stream health monitoring assessment kit).

Cheryl has noticed changes to the precious awa they live near. Cheryl says:

“I’ve known the McCarthy, which flows into the Baton, for 45 years. I’ve definitely noticed changes to this creek. It used to have such amazing yabbies in there – freshwater crayfish. It was always so clean. I’ve definitely noticed since forestry is harvested, it can be really slimy quite early in the season.”

Ange says:

“At least this process makes us tune in more to what’s happening to the awa.”

The Baton sub-catchment is in the upper part of the Motueka Catchment. Four rivers flow into the Baton – the Ellis, the Clarke, the Skeet, and the McCarthy, along with many smaller streams. These largely originate in the Kahurangi National Park. The Baton flows down the Baton Valley, meeting the Motueka at Woodstock.

Cheryl and Yuma, who is staying with Cheryl and Ange for a while, walked 40 minutes from Cheryl’s place up to Ange’s place at Baton House across a swing bridge to do the water monitoring. Tusca the dog also came along to “help out”. Ange and Cheryl were supported this time by Elliot Easton and Kate Radloff of Tasman Bay Guardians who gave some great tips and guidance, but Ange thinks she can manage herself next time now she’s had more practice.

Like the monitoring they did at the end of last year, the measurements show that the river is in a very healthy state, which is not surprising given where it is so near to the national park. The macro invertebrate sample showed a huge range of bugs, including some that only live in very clean water, such as the green stonefly. This is not to say that streams flowing into the Baton, and the Baton itself, aren’t being affected by surrounding land uses.

Cheryl and Ange don’t just monitor freshwater. Ange has just had a wetland constructed, with the help of MCC, which she was excited to see filled with water after the recent rain. The wetland is now fenced so stock can’t get in. She has many other restoration projects on her list of priorities for the Baton House land holdings, that she is kaitiaki of.

Cheryl has also done a lot on her property:

“I regularly attend Kate’s propogation group and I grow up natives to be planted up at my property. I have a little baby wetland that I’ve been protecting. We had goats and it wasn’t fenced so the plants had all been eaten. We fenced the wetland and its been amazing to see plants that I thought were dead coming away like the carex sector which were munched for over 40 years by goats – such strong lifeforce. I got given 100 kahikatea which gave me the initiative to fence. We’ve since planted a lot more into the wetland including carex virgata. I’m also planting a huge riparian area along the Baton River.

Many other residents also do their bit to look after the whenua. Cheryl commented:

“We have 2 QE2 covenanted blocks in the catchment, lots of trapping happening and most of the landowners are trying to do best practices for sustainability.”

Baton residents are a close knit community who dearly love their valley. Together they are striving to live in harmony with the whenua.