NZARM Masterclass: Catchment Management and What Makes Successful Catchment Groups

NZARM Masterclass Session 2022

Tash Styles, Josh Brown and Richard Johns presented on Catchment Management and What Makes Successful Catchment Groups.

Tash is the team leader of the Land Management Planning team, the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s team of Land Management Advisors. Tash’s background is in farming good management practices, soil quality and greenhouse gas emissions. Tash works with several catchment groups across the Wairarapa and loves working with groups to see them connect their vision with actions and how to combine this with the overall catchment priorities.

Josh is the Managing Director of Rural Consulting, a firm comprised of trusted advisors to the agricultural sector challenging farmers to succeed. Through Rural Consulting, Josh has developed a focus on supporting catchment groups, specifically with project design and delivery. For the past five years, Josh has been involved with the Hurunui District Landcare Group (HDLG), a catchment group comprised of 300, predominately sheep and beef farm businesses in North Canterbury. Over this time, he has been responsible for implementing the group’s shift from advocacy focus to the extension emphasis it has today. This includes designing and project managing the unique, one-on-one delivered, extension and farmer support programme it runs today. Aside from working with Catchment Groups, Josh also works with Regional Councils to review and develop implementation and extension programmes like Environment Canterbury’s Hill Country Erosion programme.

Richard owns and operates a sheep and beef farm at Wainuioru in the heart of the Wairarapa with his wife Mel and their 3 school-age children. They have busy lifestyles with both Richard and Mel involved in multiple community organisations, keen on active relaxing and being the sole labour unit on the farm leads to very busy weeks. Richard is passionate about being involved in issues that have a direct effect on his business, lifestyle and community. Richard’s initial interest in catchment-related issues began with wanting to know what the state of their water quality was in Wainuioru. Apart from sediment issues the water quality in the Wainuioru catchment is very good. This has led to greater involvement for Richard as he became the inaugural chair of the newly formed catchment group, which won the 2022 Greater Wellington Region Ballance farm environment award for a catchment group. Richard has also been appointed to the WaiP2K Catchment Communities steering committee, a Wairarapa-wide MPI-funded catchment programme.