Environment Enhancement Fund applications open.
Environment Canterbury’s Environment Enhancement Fund opened earlier this week, and landowners and groups working to protect and enhance native biodiversity throughout the region have until August 31 to apply for contestable grants of up to $5,000.
This year, the fund has $224,727 available for grants with $175,000 being proposed by Environment Canterbury and $49,727 from the Honda TreeFund.
Financial assistance can be granted for any project on private land that contributes to the region's indigenous biodiversity and on public land through the Honda TreeFund. It usually involves the protection or enhancement of waterways, wetlands, coastal dunes and native vegetation.
The chair of Environment Canterbury’s biodiversity portfolio, Cr Jane Demeter, said the number of applications received each year has been growing since the fund’s inception in 2002.
“The fund is a major initiative for Environment Canterbury and the Honda TreeFund in protecting and enhancing the region’s land values and biodiversity throughout Canterbury,” said Cr Demeter.
“We are anticipating a strong number of applicants for the 2009 round of funding. The funding supports landowners’ increasing willingness to protect and enhance biodiversity values. The objective of the fund is to continue the awareness of biodiversity values amongst landowners now and into the future."
Environment Canterbury programme manager pests and biodiversity Stephen Hall said that protection of biodiversity assets often requires partnership and collaboration and this fund is a mechanism to enable this approach to occur.
Some of the successful projects from 2008 throughout Canterbury included:
• 380 metres of fencing materials to restrict stock access and enhance water quality along Police Creek, a tributary of the Okana Stream in Little River on Banks Peninsula.
• Creation of a new habitat for the threatened Canterbury Mudfish in an unused water race in Ashburton.
• Native plants and fencing materials to protect and enhance valuable habitat on the margins of Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora. Fencing will protect the margins and existing vegetation from stock access reducing contaminants from entering the lake.
• Funding towards native plants from the Honda TreeFund to attract native birds and animals to the Waihaorunga School grounds in Waimate, South Canterbury.
• Fencing materials to protect a significant remnant native bush area in Cheviot including 500 year old totara trees.
• Native plants and fencing materials to protect and enhance the quality of habitat for inanga spawning on an area of Benzies Creek, a tributary of Saltwater Creek in North Canterbury.
The Environment Enhancement Fund provides grants for no more than 50 percent of a project’s total cost. Application forms and further information on the funding programme are available from Environment Canterbury’s website on www.ecan.govt.nz/eef or by calling Customer Services on 0800 324 636.
For more information: Councillor Jane Demeter, Chair of the Biodiversity Portfolio, 03 365 2399.
Photographs of the previous EEF winners are available. Contact Nicola Hunt, Project and Events Coordinator, on (03) 371 7192, 027 241-0146.