Poplar planting helps repair and prevent slips

Poplars were just the ticket for Te Miro landowner Shane Blair to address a slip the size of a rugby field on a steep hill country farm.

Over the past few years, with help from Waikato Regional Council, Shane has been planting out the entire gully affected by the slip with noticeable results.

“It’s stopped moving,” says Shane, who runs sheep and beef on his 387-hectare hill country property with five streams on it.

“Slips cause a hell of a lot of sediment in the creeks down below for years on end and you lose grazing ability.”

Slips on steep pasture slopes also remove the topsoil, making the land less productive, and the sediment often carried down the hillside and can endanger tracks and other infrastructure.

“I went and talked to the council about it and attended a field day on poplars,” says Shane.

He says poplar pole planting was recommended to provide root reinforcement to the erodible slopes and any overland flow paths.

The council secured $3.7 million in government funding for landowners in the lower Waikato, central, west coast, Waipā and Coromandel areas to spend on hill country erosion management work from 2019 to 2023. The council can currently fund the cost of poplar poles by up to 65 per cent.

Shane has also taken advantage of other funding available through Waikato Regional Council and QEII Trust to fence off remanent bush blocks (which include flowering rata), streams and wetlands, and for riparian planting.

He says the council’s catchment management officer for his area, Melinda Dresser, “is awesome”.

“I tell her what I’m doing, ask what I need to do, and she tells me.

“I’ve planted thousands and thousands of trees. I’ve ring fenced three bush blocks and am about to do a fourth. It’s a huge cost. If I didn’t get funding from the council, I probably would only have done half of what I’ve done.

“I do it to set it up for the next generation. I’ve noticed the regeneration of small plants coming through now that land has been fenced from stock and with predator control; a lot of the ferns are coming on again.”

There are also operational benefits.

“With careful management you can help stock movement. And also for animal health: if stock are sick they will go in the bush and hide, so they are easier to find.”