A trust is installing a line of poles to block vehicle access to the beach in a Waikato coastal settlement because it's "sick and tired" of people driving over pipi beds, fish spawning grounds, and seabird nests.
By Rachel Moore of RNZ
Onepū Charitable Trust is installing a wooden pole barrier at Kāwhia Beach near Maketū marae that it says will permanently block vehicle access from the Saturday of Labour Weekend.
"We used to go and gather about a dozen sacks of pipi for the marae, and they're no longer there. They are dying," Merv Ranga said.
The 74-year-old was born and bred in Kāwhia and had been catching and collecting kaimoana there all his life.
He said they used to catch butterfish, which had also disappeared. The oysters? Also gone, as was the flounder.
It used to take about 30 minutes to get two litres of whitebait. They've also gone.
"You can't do that now. There's nothing."
The Onepū Charitable Trust kaumatua said the pātaka kai was their inheritance and if they didn't do anything about it, they'd lose it for ever.
Stopping vehicles driving to Ocean Beach's Te Puia Hot Springs directly over seafood beds was why chair Horahaere Daisy Scott said the trust was installing the poles.
Scott said it was working with local landowners to put the two-metre poles at the end of the Maketū marae seawall down towards the low-tide mark on the beach.
Half the poles were in already, but a gap had been left for cars. From Saturday, that gap would close.
"The vehicles and motorbikes have ruined our kaimoana beds. I was born and bred at Maketū marae and the lagoon at Te Ārai o Te Wiwini was our pātaka kai, our food basket. Our kōkota and tuatua were huge. Our seafood stock thrived because our kaumātua and kuia protected the habitat."
Scott said the closure was not about keeping people away from Ocean Beach, it's about protecting the environment.
"Our kaimoana beds are almost destroyed. We have no choice but to close vehicle access travelling over our land to the lagoon.
"We've had enough of being treated as though our local knowledge doesn't matter. This is a very sensitive coastal environment. Shorebirds nest in and around the dunes at the lagoon, and it is also a vital fish spawning ground, especially for flounder.
"Our pātaka kai has sustained generations of our people. We have a responsibility to protect it for the generations coming after us."
The trust put a petition to the council last year, signed by 600 people, asking for an alternative route to Ocean Beach, in efforts to protect the vulnerable areas.
But it was still waiting.
"That is more or less the idea of why we're putting the polls and putting in this stopping of motorised vehicles, is to hurry them up and find an alternative accessway.
"Otherwise this situation will be going on in my great grandchildren's time. So hopefully we'll have this all sorted before then."
She said drivers were also not taking note of the tides and getting stuck in the mud or incoming water and vehicles ripped up the sand dunes that buffered the harbour's edge from waves and erosion.
Scott said the lagoon would remain open to walkers and horses, and a new sign would mark the barrier to remind drivers the route was now closed.
"We are just waiting for the backlash."
Local environmental group Te Taiao o Kāwhia Moana member Rod Barnett said scientists had warned the only way for the kaimoana to recover was by letting it be.
"Kāwhia has been a kai basket for hundreds of years, a kai basket for locals and just about everybody you speak to here who's been living here for say 30, 40, 50 years has talked about how all the kai, the kaimoana has diminished since the place was opened up.
"We've got a real depletion of the local resource for the local people. And not only them but also as the other fishing spots around the country get overfished, more and more people are coming to the west coast because it hasn't been overfished, but now we're getting that too."
He said there also used to be a big dotterel population, but now there was only about one or two birds
"It's really upsetting. That's why we put the posts up because they're sick and tired."
Ōtorohanga District Council's regulatory and growth group manager Tony Quickfall said private landowners whose title extended into the foreshore could only lawfully stop vehicle access above high tide.
He said the posts situated below the tideline were therefore in breach of Ōtorohanga District Council's Traffic Management Bylaw.
Quickfall said it would work with landowners to remove those barriers below high tide, where vehicles were restricted to 20kmh.
The trust said the council asked it to remove the poles below the tideline but it declined.
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